Photo by Chris Wood / Flickr Houston’s Second Poet Laureate (2015–2017) and a member of the Texas Institute of Letters since 2019, Robin Davidson is the author of three books of p…

2021 was a robust year for literary translations. This list kept growing, and we didn’t resist. As always, though, we recognize there are, thankfully, many more and hope you’ll add them in…

I stepped out of Keflavík airport at 4:30 a.m. Far off in the dimly lit parking lot was the bus to Reykjavík—parked, empty, still off-duty. Winds buffeted me from above, the cold air curling its…

Esther Gerritsen Craving (fiction) Trans. Michele Hutchinson World Editions In Dutch writer Esther Gerritsen’s Craving, readers follow Coco, who moves in with her dying mot…

PHOTO: Edward Hill A prolific translator, playwright, novelist, and essayist from Singapore, Jeremy Tiang is the recipient of a PEN/Heim Grant, an NEA Literary Translati…

Ksenia Buksha / Courtesy of the author With apologies to Raymond Carver, what do we translate when we translate literature? What are we doing? And how do we do it? There…

Translating poetry is impossible in the sense that prose works can be translated (not to speak of the translation of nonliterary texts). But re-creating poetry in a different language is always possib…

Looking back on 2017, it’s easy to declare the year a success for literary translation, which continued to thrive and move in exciting new directions. Of note, Emily Wilson translated The…

Seth Michelson / Courtesy of Washington & Lee UniversityIn October 2017 nonprofit press Settlement House released Dreaming America: Voices of Undocumented Youth in Maximum-Security Detention…

Top right: Ben Faccini / Courtesy of English PEN. Bottom right: Kelsey MadsenBen Faccini is a novelist, writer, and translator based in London. He was born in England and brought up in France and Ital…

Liu Xiaobo, 1991 / Courtesy of Wang YaTranslator’s note: This photo of Liu Xiaobo swimming surfaced on the Internet after the sea burial in Dalian, China. Those of us who were heartb…

Ekin Oklap discusses her personal journey to becoming a translator and provides some insight into her experiences with translating her current project, Orhan Pamuk’s The Red-Haired W…

John, “Fallen Angel,” August 29, 2010 Here and NowHere he is sitting across from the balcony door;the wind will blow – a wound. The rustling lightblushes and fades in the rectan…

Photo by Jonathan ArmstrongTranslator Allison Markin Powell discusses her most recent project, The Nakano Thrift Shop, and provides some insight into her approach to the…

moomin goat, “Goat Bells,” April 9, 2007Click here to read Sneeden’s translations of four of Giannisi’s poems. Phoebe Giannisi is one of Greece’s foremost contemporary poets and…

Lorenzo Gaudenzi, “Agria,” September 15, 2016For more, read Brian Sneeden’s translator’s note on Giannisi’s work. (Nostos I)       …

The only task FitzGerald finished and published in his lifetime was his marvelous rendering of the Rubaiyat of the Persian poet Omar Khayyam, with whom he felt a curiously close affinity across a…

Mike Prince, “Black Drongo at Sunrise,” October 7, 2015Where Would I GoWhere would I goI shall only stay here,like a handprinton a doorjust to be there,I’ll be hidden inthe smell of…

Mathias Énard’s Compass (New Directions, 2017) is not only a love letter to the field of orientalism but, more broadly, to the power of the written word itself, especially in translatio…

The dog days of summer are upon us, and there’s no better way to pass through the longer days than curling up with a book in the shade. If you’re looking for some words to keep you company…

Robert Creeley (1972) / Photo by Elsa DorfmanIn April, following the death of Yevgeny Yevtushenko, I was digging through a wicker chest with old papers, looking at a colleague’s request for a fe…

Six years after its initial French publication, Luis de Miranda’s novella Who Killed the Poet? (Qui a tué le poète?) is being translated into English and multiple other lan…

Starling murmuration. Photo by Airwolfhound/FlickrFive years after meeting at the Literary Translation Summer School run by the British Centre for Literary Translation, translators Morgan Giles, R…

Drawing by Lea Goldberg / Courtesy of Tuvia RuebnerLea Goldberg (1911–1970), preeminent, versatile, and prolific writer of modern Hebrew letters, produced in her lifetime poetry that was charact…

Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase (1912), oil on canvas, 147 × 89.2 cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art / The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, 1950Desnudo bajando una escale…