This August, we once again celebrate Women in Translation (#WiT) Month! This reading series was initiated by blogger Meytal Radzinski in 2014 to raise awareness of translated literature by women, queer, and nonbinary authors, and promote gender and cultural diversity in literary publishing. This year, our free, virtual reading series gathers voices from across time zones for an international celebration!
Organized under the support of PEN America and the PEN America Translation Committee, these events bring together three panels of translators, joined by their authors, working in a diversity of languages. The readings will be followed by brief Q&A discussions. We hope you’ll join us for these one-of-a-kind bilingual readings!
The August 27 session will be moderated by Nancy Naomi Carlson, with readings in Polish, Norwegian, German, French, Danish, and Greek.
The translator/author pairs are as follows:
- Piotr Florczyk (trans) and Antonia Tosiek (Polish)
- Kathleen Maris Paltrineri (trans) and Kristin Berget (Norwegian)
- Neil Blackadder (trans) and Anne Weber (German & French)
- Michael Favala Goldman (trans) and Sine Plambech (Danish)
- Aliki Barnstone (trans) and Liana Sakelliou (Greek)
Participants
Nancy Naomi Carlson won the 2022 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. Author of seventeen titles (including twelve translations), her poetry and translations have been noted in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Ms. Magazine. Gestuary (Seagull Books, 2026), her translation of French-Senegalese author Sylvie Kandé, was recently released.
Piotr Florczyk is an award-winning poet, essayist, and translator. He teaches global literary studies at UW-Seattle, and lives with his family in Los Angeles.
Antonina Tosiek is a scholar, poet, and essayist. Among her many honors are the Wisława Szymborska Award, the Adam Włodek Award, and the City of Warsaw Literary Award.
Kathleen Maris Paltrineri is a poet and translator from Norwegian. A former Fulbright Fellow to Norway, she has taught Literary Translation at the University of Iowa. Her work may be found at kathleenmarispaltrineri.com.
Kristin Berget has published seven poetry collections as well as the novel Sonja Sacre Cæur. She is the recipient of the Triztan Vindtorn Poetry Prize, the Stig Sæterbakken Memorial Prize, and the Tanum Women’s Scholarship.
Neil Blackadder translates drama and prose from German and French. Many of his play translations have been produced, and he’s received grants from the NEA, PEN, and the Howard Foundation. https://neilblackadder.com
Anne Weber has written a dozen books, each in a German and a French version; she also translates into both languages. She won the 2020 German Book Prize for Epic Annette. https://theindigopress.com/anne-weber/
Michael Favala Goldman is a writing teacher, jazz clarinetist, award-winning author of ten books of poetry and translator of eighteen books of Danish literature. He lives in Florence, Massachusetts. https://michaelfavalagoldman.com/
Danish anthropologist, award-winning film director and author Sine Plambech has dedicated her life to researching, filmmaking, writing, and organizing regarding the rights of migrants, women, and sex workers. https://sineplambech.com/
Aliki Barnstone is a Greek-American open-genre writer, translator, and former poet laureate of Missouri. Liana Sakelliou’s translation into Greek of Aliki’s Eva: Voices of an Imaginary Poet came out in Athens in 2023.
Liana Sakelliou is a Greek poet, editor, translator, and Professor of English Emerita at the University of Athens. Aliki’s translation into English of Liana’s Portrait Before Dark came out in the U.S. in 2022.