CAT Events

As featured in San Francisco Magazine's "Best Of the Bay Area"

• Poetry Translation workshop with Karen Emmerich: Impossible Things?: Poetry in Translation
  Wednesday, May 13
  

• Karen Emmerich: Acclaimed New Talent on Contemporary Greek Writing
  Tuesday, May 12, 12:30-1:30 p.m.
  

• Katherine Silver: Fiction on the Edge from Latin America
  Tuesday, October 7, 12:30-1:30 p.m.
  

• Valzhyna Mort: Belarusian Sensation Reads Her Electrifying Poems
  Tuesday, November 11, 12:30-1:30 p.m.
  

• Yoko Tawada: At Home Between Cultures (Germany-Japan)
  Tuesday, February 10, 12:30-1:30 p.m.
  

• Fady Joudah: Yale Younger Poet on Palestinian Author Mahmoud Darwish
  Tuesday, March 10, 12:30-1:30 p.m.
  

• Robert Hass: The Poet as Translator
  Tuesday, April 14, 12:30-1:30 p.m.
  

• Book Launch Party for BEST OF CONTEMPORARY MEXICAN FICTION
  Wednesday, May 20
  

• Lit&Lunch end-of-season event with Cuban novelist José Manuel Prieto and his translator Esther Allen.
  Tuesday, June 9, 12:30-1:30 p.m.
  

• REX at the REX:
  wine reception and conversation with José Manuel Prieto and Esther Allen
  Wednesday, June 10, 6:00–8:00 p.m.
  

Cost: $15 includes wine and hors d'oeuvres. Seating is limited.
Tickets available at the door.

Directions: Park at the Sutter-Stockton Garage (444 Stockton St.) or walk 5 blocks northwest from Powell BART.

Released last month in English translation by Allen, Rex is the final volume in a trilogy of Prieto's novels that includes the acclaimed Nocturnal Butterflies of the Russian Empire. It is a sophisticated literary game rife with allusions to Proust and Borges, set in a world of wealthy Russian expats and mafiosos in western Europe. The Los Angeles Times calls Rex "the most glittering example of literary play to have emerged in recent memory."

An important voice in Spanish-language literature, Prieto is also a major translator of Russian literature into Spanish, including works by Vladimir Nabokov and Joseph Brodsky. He is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship. Esther Allen is a renowned translator of Spanish-language authors José Martí, Jorge Luis Borges, and Alma Guillermoprieto, among others. She is a prominent advocate for world literature and translation.

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Join us for the first reading of our 2008-2009 season, co-sponsored by LitQuake. Katherine Silver reads and discusses her NEA award-winning translation of Senselessness, Salvadoran writer Horacio Castellanos Moya's novel in which a boozing, sex-obsessed writer finds himself employed by the Catholic Church to proofread a 1,100 page report on the army's massacre and torture of thousands of indigenous villagers a decade earlier, including the testimonies of the survivors.

About Senselessness, Russell Banks has written, "This is a brilliantly crafted moral fable, as if Kafka had gone to Latin America for his source materials. I've not read anything quite like it. Clearly, Castellanos Moya is a major writer who deserves a wide audience in the U.S."

Click here for interviews with Katherine Silver and a profile of Horacio Castellanos Moya.

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Belarusian sensation Valzhyna Mort reads from the electrifying poems of Factory of Tears, her debut in English out from Copper Canyon Press in 2008, co-translated by Pulitzer Prize winner Franz Wright. Mort is known throughout Europe for her remarkable reading performances and writes in her native Belarusian at a time when efforts are being made to reestablish the traditional language. At once political and erotic, Mort's poems dazzle with wit and invention.

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Novelist and poet Yoko Tawada reads from her work and discusses the challenges and pleasures of writing in both Japanese and German. Born in Tokyo, Tawada has been a long-time resident of Germany. She received the prestigious Akutagawa Prize in 1993 for The Bridegroom Was a Dog. In 1996, she won the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize, a German award granted to foreign writers for their contribution to German culture. Where Europe Begins, a collection of stories written in both Japanese and German and translated by Yumi Selden and Susan Bernofsky, was selected by Marjorie Perloff as a 2005 TLS Book of the Year.

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2007 Yale Younger Poet Fady Joudah reads from his stunning debut collection, The Earth in the Attic, and recent translations of Palestinian national poet Mahmoud Darwish. Joudah is the winner of the 2008 Saif Ghobash – Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation for The Butterfly's Burden, his translation of Darwish published by Copper Canyon Press. In addition to his work as a poet and translator, Joudah works as a physician in Houston and as a field member of Doctors Without Borders.

Special thanks to the ARAB CULTURAL AND COMMUNITY CENTER for co-sponsoring this event.

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Join us for a special event as Robert Hass reads and discusses his world-renowned translations. A long-time translator of Nobel Prize-winning Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz, Hass has also translated The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa and edited Selected Poems: 1954-1986 by Tomas Tranströmer. An activist on behalf of poetry, literacy, and the environment, Hass was the U.S. Poet Laureate from 1995-1997. He is the founder of River of Words, which promotes environmental and arts education in affiliation with the Library of Congress Center for the Book. His most recent collection of poems, Time and Materials, received the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for 2007.

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National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Karen Emmerich reads her translations spanning the history of 20th-century Greek literature including the highly praised new collection of short stories by Amanda Michalopoulou.

Poetry Translation workshop with Karen Emmerich:
Impossible Things?: Poetry in Translation
Wednesday, May 13, 6:00-8:00 pm
Mechanics' Institute Library Meeting Room, 4th Floor 57 Post Street
San Francisco, CA 94104

Lit&Lunch speaker and award-winning Greek translator Karen Emmerich will lead a hands-on workshop in the art of literary translation, designed both for those new to the field and for those more experienced with the undertaking. This session will focus on issues common to the translation of poetry into English; translators and students of translation working from any language or languages are welcome. Emmerich will discuss the particular problems raised by the translation of poetry and discuss procedures and methods. Participants are invited to bring up to five pages of translations (with originals) for written comments from the instructor. Co-sponsored by the Center and the Northern California Translators Association.

Cost: $40 NCTA members/$70 non-members
Register at NCTA website

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Celebrate our final reading of the 2008-2009 season! Cuban novelist José Manual Prieto and his translator Esther Allen will read from Prieto's latest book, Rex. Released last month by Grove Press, Rex is a sophisticated literary game rife with allusions to Proust and Borges, set in a world of wealthy Russian expats and mafiosos in western Europe.

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Check back for information about future readings and events...