Conversation & Series

Translating the Future: “Motherless Tongues, Multiple Belongings III,” with Janet Hong, Pierre Joris & María José Giménez

Tue, Aug 18, 2020

1:30 PM–2:30 PM

Livestream via HowlRound; Register for link below

Watch the recording of this event below:

Join us for Week 15 of Translating the Future as we continue our series of conversations between translators with “Motherless Tongues, Multiple Belongings III,” with Janet Hong, Pierre Joris & María José Giménez.

Translating the Future continues its dismantling of the monolingual paradigm, inspired by Yasemin Yildiz’s landmark 2012 Beyond the Mother Tongue and the work of Bruna Dantas Lobato, this time with writer and translator from the Korean, Janet Hong; poet, essayist, editor, and translator from various languages, Pierre Joris; and poet, translator and editor María José Giménez.

Click here to register for this event and for the link to the livestream. Free and open to the public, the livestream will start at Tue, August 18th, at 1:30 PM (EDT).

The conversations will be hosted by Esther Allen & Allison Markin PowellSamantha Schnee. *Viewers can submit questions during the livestreaming at [email protected].

Speaker Bios:

Janet Hong is a writer and translator based in Vancouver, Canada. She received the 2018 TA First Translation Prize for her translation of Han Yujoo’s The Impossible Fairy Tale, which was also a finalist for both the 2018 PEN Translation Prize and the 2018 National Translation Award. Her recent translations include Ha Seong-nan’s Bluebeard’s First Wife, Yeon-Sik Hong’s Umma’s Table, and Keum Suk Gendry-Kim’s Grass.

Pierre Joris has moved between Europe, the US & North Africa for some 55 years now, publishing as many books of poetry, essays, translations and anthologies — most recently A City Full of Voices: Essays on the Work of Robert Kelly (co-edited with Peter Cockelbergh & Joel Newberger, CMP), Arabia (not so) Deserta (Essays, Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2019); Conversations in the Pyrenees with Adonis (CMP 2018), and The Book of U (poems, with Nicole Peyrafitte, Editions Simoncini 2017). Forthcoming in 2020 : Fox-trails, -tales & -trots: Poems & Proses (Black Fountain Press); Microliths: Posthumous Proseof Paul Celan, from CMP & The Collected Earlier Poetry of Paul Celan from Farrar Straus Giroux. When not on the road, he lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, with his wife, multimedia praticienne Nicole Peyrafitte.

María José Giménez is a poet, translator, and editor whose work has received support from the NEA, the Studios at MASS MoCA, the Breadloaf Translators’ Conference, Canada Council for the Arts, and Banff International Literary Translators’ Centre. Among other awards, María José has been named 2019–2021 Poet Laureate of Easthampton, Massachusetts. Learn more at www.mariajosetranslates.com.

Translating the Future:

Visit Translating the Future page here for the complete conference Program, video recordings of previous events in this series, as well as archival audio recordings, articles, the original program, and more history from PEN’s 1970 World of Translation conference.

This conference and conversation series is co-sponsored by PEN America, the Center for the Humanities at The Graduate Center, CUNY, and the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, with additional support from the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center.