Attending AWP? Check out Katherine E. Young’s Panel on Women in Translation
"This panel of poet-translators working in Catalan, French, and Russian focuses on the systems of exclusion that permeate the literary culture in this country and the role of translators in amplifying these voices."
Join professional translators Katherine E. Young, Aviya Kushner, Nancy Naomi Carlson, Sharon Dolin, and Andrea Jurjević as they discuss "systems of exclusion which permeate literary culture." This panel at AWP is an important one for Katherine E. Young who has historically translated Russian-language authors experiencing oppression. Her latest translation, Anna Starobinets' Look at Him, is a memoir recounting the treatment of a young woman carrying a terminally ill child.
Katherine E. Young's poetry also contends with gender issues and advocates for female empowerment. Her latest collection, Woman Drinking Absinthe, places the struggles and triumphs of women in historical and modern contexts. The women of these poems, from the naïf who willfully ignores evidence of Bluebeard’s crimes to Manet’s dispirited barmaid at the Folies-Bergère, brush off convention at their peril, even though convention imperils their bodies, their spirits, and their art.
This panel is available to all attendees of the all-digital 2021 AWP conference.
Linda Watanabe McFerrin Interviewed for Author Matthew Felix’s Video Podcast
Author and poet Linda Watanabe McFerrin sat down with Matthew Felix, himself an author of some renown, for Matthew’s video podcast this last weekend. What follows is an in-depth, thoughtful, and often irreverent look at writing, life, travel, and zombies. And more, we get to hear many of the juicy details on Linda’s new Legacy Book due out from ASP in Autumn 2019…
Fact or Fiction
…And so it is for me, as I send an invented “namesake” into worlds I know vicariously but haven’t lived—Hollywood and hippies, communes and con artists, Woodstock and the Summer of Love. In the opening of Melanie’s Song, J.J. is poised at the edge of the Pacific reflecting on where she has been and where she is going. She is endowed with a deep and spiritual connection to a native place we share, but I am also setting her free to fly into her own undiscovered territory.
Featured Poetry: “Bluebirds” by Grace Cavalieri
Other Voices, Other Lives was my introduction to Grace. Her book sits now on my shelf between The Waves and Duino Elegies, the pages are worn from thumbing-thru, it is dog-eared, destroyed in certain ways well-loved books are destroyed, aged by the eyes, like good denim, but here the creases are black underlines, and the fading is from yellow highlighter and coffee stains. So in honor of, well, my deep admiration for Grace, I’ve picked one of her poems from Other Voices, Other Lives to share. If this is the first encounter with her poetry, welcome, hello, the books page is just yonder up the screen under “books”! If you’ve long been a fan, I think “Bluebirds” is a great poem to share with those who might not yet have been introduced to Grace’s work.