Literary Translation as Practice and Profession: A Roundtable with Sarah Booker, Denise Kripper and Jeffrey Zuckerman, moderated by Katie Hammitt

What does literary translation look like from a professional perspective? How does one break into the field of literary translation? What considerations do translators of literature take when choosing texts, approaching editors and authors, and preparing for commercial audiences? This roundtable will engage with the practical side of literary translation, drawing on the experience of three translators.

Sarah Booker is an educator and literary translator, with Spanish to English translations including Monica Ojeda’s Jawbone, Gabriela Ponce’s Blood Red, and Cristina Rivera Garza’s New and Selected Stories. Her translations have also been published in journals such as the Paris Review and Asymptote, and She has a PhD in Hispanic Literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is currently based in Morganstown, North Carolina where she teaches Spanish at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics.

Denise Kripper is an Associate Professor at Lake Forest College and the Translation Editor at Latin American Literature Today. She is also the author of the monograph Narratives of Mistranslation: Fictional Translators in Latin American Literature and the co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Latin American Literary Translation. She is currently translating into English Argentine author Adriana Riva’s debut novel La Sal, forthcoming in 2023 via Veliz Books.

Jeffrey Zuckerman is a translator of French, including books by Jean-Michel Basquiat and the Dardenne Brothers, queer writers Jean Genet and Herve Guibert, among many others. A graduate of Yale University, He has been the finalist for the TA First Translation Prize, the French-American Foundation Translation Prize, and the PEN Translation Prize, he has won a PEN/HEIM translation grant and the French Voices Grand Prize. He was named a Chevalier in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government.

Katie Hammitt is a PhD Candidate in the French and Francophone studies track of the University of Southern California’s CSLC Department, where she also earned her Graduate Certificate in Translation Studies. Her scholarly work on translating Tahitian author Chantal Spitz is forthcoming in The Australian Journal of French Studies, The French Australian Review, and H-Net’s online journal Imaginaries.

This event is sponsored by the USC Dornsife Departments of Comparative Literature, French and Italian,  and Latin American and Iberian Cultures