[New York, NY]

Middle Eastern Literature Symposium with Susan Bernofsky
March 28, 2012, 11:00 am
at The Graduate Center, CUNY

Interwoven Worlds: A Symposium Celebrating the Literature of the Middle EastA Queens College Trends in Translation Event, sponsored by the MFA Program in Creative Writing & Literary Translation, Archipelago Books, & the Middle East and Middle Eastern American Center (MEMEAC) at the CUNY Graduate Center. To celebrate the new collaboration between Queens College and Archipelago Books, the MFA Program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation presents a one-day symposium on writing and translation.  This symposium, which forms part of the Queens College Year of Turkey, will present writers and translators featured in recent Archipelago Books publications as well as others working in the literatures of Turkey, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Palestine and Israel. Program: (All panels prior to 6:30pm keynote address located in President’s Conference Room #2) 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. Reading by MFA Students, introduced by Nicole Cooley 12:00 p.m. - l:00 p.m. Lunch break 1:15 p.m. – 2:45 p.m. Workshop: Editing Translations, introduced by Susan Bernofsky             Jill Schoolman (Archipelago Books)             Edwin Frank (New York Review Books Classics) 2:45 p.m. - 3:15 p.m. Coffee Break 3:15 p.m. – 4:45 p.m. The Politics of Translation – On Navigating Cultural (Mis)understandings             Aron Aji (Turkish)             Sara Khalili (Persian)             Barbara Harshav (Hebrew)             Roger Sedarat, moderator 5:00 p.m.  – 6:15 p.m. The Writer as Translator – Multilingual Writer/Translators on Cross-Pollinations in Their Work             Sinan Antoon  (Arabic)             Murat Nemet-Nejat (Turkish)             Ammiel Alcalay (Hebrew)             Susan Bernofsky, moderator 6:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. Rosenthal Library 230 (2nd floor auditorium) Keynote Presentation: Elias Khoury (Arabic/Lebanon): A Writer’s Journey To be followed by light reception and book signing. Susan Bernofsky has translated eighteen books, including six by the great Swiss-German modernist writer Robert Walser, as well as novels by Jenny Erpenbeck, Yoko Tawada, Hermann Hesse, Gregor von Rezzori and others. She received the 2006 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translation Prize and the 2012 Hermann Hesse Translation Prize as well as awards and fellowships from the NEH, the NEA, the PEN Translation Fund, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the Lannan Foundation. She currently serves as Chair of the PEN Translation Committee, teaches in the MFA program at Queens College (CUNY), and blogs about translation at www.translationista.org. Archipelago Books, founded in 2004 and based in Brooklyn, is currently one of the foremost publishers of literature in translation. Archipelago books have received prizes including the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Academy of American Poets Translation Award, and the French-American Foundation/Florence Gould Translation Prize, and have been selected as an NPR Pick for Best Foreign Fiction of the Year. Archipelago’s list of authors includes prominent writers translated from Turkish, Polish, Bengali, Russian, Dutch, Swedish, Japanese, Norwegian, Afrikaans, Hungarian, Brazilian Portuguese, Basque, French, German, Chinese, Korean, Greek, Icelandic and Arabic. The MFA Program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation at Queens College is one of only two MFA programs in the country to offer a track in literary translation. Further, students specializing in all branches of creative writing are encouraged to study translation, creating a real community of writers who relish diversity and global connections.