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Women in Translation Month: Sevinç Türkkan, Ann Goldstein & Jenny McPhee, and Inea Bushnaq

Women In Translation Month Event 2019 ImageAugust is Women in Translation month (#WiTMonth), an initiative started by Biblibio blogger Meytal Radzinski in 2014 to shine light on writing and translations by women and work toward gender parity in literary publishing. This evening will showcase the work of translators and authors, while highlighting the importance of gender parity for free expression.

Join us for a reading and discussion with women translators of women writers working in Turkish, Italian, and Arabic: Sevinç Türkkan (The Stone Building and Other Places, by Aslı Erdoğan); Ann Goldstein and Jenny McPhee (Neapolitan Chronicles, by Anna Maria Ortese); and Inea Bushnaq (Pearls on a Branch, by Najla Khoury).

Organized under the aegis of the PEN America Translation Committee, the event will be moderated by Jenny Wang Medina (assistant professor of Korean literature, Emory University) and Alex Zucker (translator of Czech literature).


Sevinç Türkkan teaches modern Turkish literature and intellectual history at the University of Rochester. Her translation of The Stone Building and Other Stories was a finalist for the 2019 PEN Translation Award. She is coeditor (with David Damrosch) of Approaches to Teaching the Works of Orhan Pamuk, and is currently writing a book titled Translation Criticism and the Construction of World Literature.

Ann Goldstein has translated The Neapolitan Novels and other works by Elena Ferrante, as well as writings by Primo Levi, Giacomo Leopardi, and Pier Paolo Pasolini. She is the former head of the copy department at The New Yorker.

Jenny McPhee has translated works by Giacomo Leopardi, Primo Levi, Natalia Ginzburg, Paolo Maurensig, and Pope John Paul II.

Inea Bushnaq is a Palestinian-American writer and translator born in Jerusalem. After the Partition of Palestine in 1948, the family moved to England, where she received most of her schooling, and a degree in classics from Cambridge University. She now lives in New York City.