Mary Ann Newman is a translator by vocation and cultural administrator by profession. She has translated such major Catalan authors as Quim Monzó, Josep Carner, Josep Maria de Sagarra, and Joan Fuster. Her professional life has revolved around Catalan and Hispanic literatures and cultures. She was the founder of the Catalan Studies Program and the Catalan Center at New York University. She is the founder and executive director of the Farragut Fund for Catalan Culture in the U.S., President-delegate of the jury of the Premi Internacional Catalunya (International Catalonia Award), and, as of March 2025, a Corresponding Member of the Institute for Catalan Studies. In 1998 she received the Creu de Sant Jordi (Cross of St. George), the highest honor awarded by the Catalan government and was awarded the 2017 North American Catalan Society Prize and the J-B Cendrós Award from Òmnium Cultural for her translation of Sagarra’s Private Life, and the 2022 Ramon Llull International Award for Cultural Diversity.
Mary Ann Newman
Articles by Mary Ann Newman
Friday April 20
The PEN Ten with Alicia Kopf
In Spanish there is an expression—specifically a verb—used to refer to the act of translating, of “pouring” a book from one language into another…It seems to me to be a very apt expression.
Thursday July 6
Four Questions for Simon Armitage, Winner of the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation
For the first time in my life I was bilingual, even if I could only communicate with people who had been dead for half a millennium.
Thursday July 6
Four Questions for Tess Lewis, Winner of the 2017 PEN Translation Prize
I always read my drafts out loud when I’m polishing them—I find it easier to hear mistakes or awkward passages than to ‘see’ them.