The American Literary Translators Association has just selected its new crop of ALTA Fellows for 2017, and it sounds like a really interesting group. I’m looking forward to hearing them present their work at the annual fellows’ reading at the conference. This year’s jury was comprised of Dick Cluster, Sara Novic, and Sebastian Schulman. Speaking of the conference, ALTA40: Reflections/Refractions (it’s ALTA’s 40th anniversary), it’s time to register if you can come. It’ll be held this October 5 – 8 in Minneapolis, MN.
And here are the 2017 Fellows:
Aaron Coleman, 2017 Peter K. Jansen Memorial Travel Fellow (Spanish)
Aaron Coleman is the author of St. Trigger, which won the 2015 Button Poetry Prize, and Threat Come Close (Four Way Books, 2018). A Fulbright Scholar and Cave Canem Fellow, Aaron is currently a PhD student in Washington University in St. Louis’ Comparative Literature Program’s International Writers Track.
Bonnie Chau, 2017 ALTA Travel Fellow (Chinese and French)
Bonnie Chau has an MFA in fiction from Columbia University, with a concentration in translation, focusing on Chinese and French fiction. Her writing has appeared in Flaunt, Timber, Drunken Boat, Queen Mob’s Tea House, and other journals. A Kundiman fellow, she currently works at Poets & Writers in New York City.
Ellen Jones, 2017 ALTA Travel Fellow (Spanish)
Ellen Jones is Criticism Editor at Asymptote and a doctoral researcher at Queen Mary University of London. Her translations from Spanish into English have appeared or are forthcoming in the Guardian, Hotel, Palabras errantes, and Columbia Journal, and in Enrique Winter’s bilingual chapbook Suns (Cardboard House Press, 2017).
Zoë Sandford, 2017 ALTA Travel Fellow (Arabic and French)
Zoë Sandford was born in the US and moved to the UK at the age of eight. She holds a BA in French and Arabic from St John’s College, Oxford. Her original writing has appeared in The ISIS and Vulture.
Timea Sipos, 2017 ALTA Travel Fellow (Hungarian)
Timea Sipos is a Hungarian-American translator and writer currently earning her MFA in Fiction at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her translation has appeared at The Short Story Project. She is in the process of translating Ilka Papp-Zakor’s short story collection and 2015 JAK Kendő Award winner, Angel Dinner.
David Smith, 2017 ALTA Travel Fellow (Norwegian)
David M. Smith is an Atlanta-based translator of Norwegian fiction. He holds a Master’s Degree in the Humanities from the University of Chicago. His work has appeared in Drunken Boat.
You’ll find more information about each of these translators on he ALTA website. Congratulations to all six!