Annual Women in Translation Reading & Discussion

We are thrilled to host members of Chicago’s own Third Coast Translators Collective to present their latest translations and fill you in on #WiTMonth developments. Everybody and every body welcome.

This year's featured participants include:

Moderator Susan Harris is the editorial director of Words Without Borders. With Ilya Kaminsky, she coedited The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry.

Susanna Lang’s translation of poetry by Souad Labbize, My Soul Has No Corners, is available from Diálogos Books (2023), and a new collection by Labbize, Unfasten the silk of your silence, is now available from Éditions des Lisières (2025). My Forests, poems by Hélène Dorion, is forthcoming from Book*hug Press. Other translations include Words in Stone by Yves Bonnefoy (University of Massachusetts Press, 1976) and Baalbek by Nohad Salameh (L'Atelier du Grand Tétras, 2021). Her translations of these and other French poets are published or forthcoming in Asymptote, Delos, The Literary Review, Transference, Another Chicago Magazine, Ezra, Oomph! Journal, Mayday, AzonaL The Ilanot Review and Columbia Journal. Her chapbook of original poems, Like This, appeared in 2023 from Unsolicited Books, and her fourth full-length collection, This Spangled Dark, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press. In 2024, she won the Marvin Bell Memorial Poetry Prize, awarded by December Magazine for “In Your Father’s Garden.”

Kevin Gerry Dunn is a Spanish/English translator and a ghostwriter. His translations include The Tyranny of Flies by Elaine Vilar Madruga, Easy Reading by Cristina Morales, Hungry for What by María Bastarós (one of the Guardian’s five best translated books of 2024), and works by Paul B. Preciado, Daniela Tarazona, Paco Cerdà, Ousman Umar, and Javier Castillo. He has received an English PEN Award, a PEN/Heim Grant, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, as well as arts residencies at the Banff Literary Translation Centre (Canada), Translation House Looren (Switzerland), and the Casa del Traductor (Spain).

Alex Niemi is a writer and literary translator. She is the recipient of an NEA translation grant, the Heldt Prize, and an AATSEEL Book Award. Her latest translation is The Endless Week by Laura Vazquez (Dorothy, a publishing project) and she is the author of the poetry chapbook Elephant (Dancing Girl Press). Learn more about The Third Coast Translators Collective at tctranslatorscollective.org Learn more about Women in Translation Month at biblibio.blogspot.com, womenintranslation.tumblr.com, womenintranslation.org/witmonth

Accessibility: This event is hosted at the bookstore, which is a wheelchair accessible space. Masks are required. Seating is on a first-come, first-serve basis. To request ASL interpretation for this event, please email ZXZlbnRzIHwgd29tZW5hbmRjaGlsZHJlbmZpcnN0ICEgY29t by no later than 14 days before the event. For scholarship tickets or other access needs please email .

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