AG Educational Events
Friday, May 16, 2025
12:00 pm Eastern
Online
How does one begin and succeed at publishing literary translation? Join us for a roundtable discussion with esteemed editors and publishers from Archipelago, HarperVia, Open Letter Books, and Tilted Axis Press. Moderated by ALTA’s board president, Chenxin Jiang, the group will discuss how translators can navigate the current publishing landscape of literary translation:
Special thanks to the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) for collaborating with us on this event.
A Q&A will follow the presentation; you can pre-submit a question when registering for the event. A recording will be made available for those who cannot attend live.
The event will take place via Zoom with automatic closed captioning. To request any other accessibility features, please email support@authorsguild.org and we will make every effort to accommodate.
Kristen Vida Alfaro is the publisher and executive director of Tilted Axis Press. She is also a writer and has previously led labour and anti-racist organising at the Barbican. In a former life, Kristen pursued (and left) a doctorate in Cinema Studies at New York University. She is based in London and has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Observer, TANK, and Vogue Japan for her work with Tilted Axis.
Alexa Frank is an editor at HarperVia, an imprint of HarperCollins. A graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop and the Fulbright program, she has edited titles such as Tomihiko Morimi’s The Tatami Galaxy (shortlisted for the 2023 PEN Translation Prize), Lin Yi-Han’s Fang Si-Chi’s First Love Paradise (shortlisted for the Baifang Schell Books Prize), Park Seolyeon’s A Magical Girl Retires, and Elaine Vilar Madruga’s The Tyranny of Flies. Her forthcoming titles include books by Fumio Yamamoto, Kanako Nishi, Tiffany Tsao, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Francoise Sagan. Alexa also occasionally translates Japanese manga, such as Kyoko Okazaki’s River’s Edge (nominated for the 2024 Eisner Awards) and Nazuna Saito’s Offshore Lightning (winner of the 2024 Ignatz Award for Outstanding Collection).
Sarah Gale is an editor and publicist at Archipelago Books, where she greatly enjoys working on books translated from a large range of languages, including Kurdish, Portuguese, French, Slovenian, and Danish.
Chad W. Post is the director of Open Letter Books, a press at the University of Rochester dedicated to publishing contemporary literature from around the world. In addition, he is the managing editor of Three Percent, a blog and review site that promotes literature in translation and is home to both the Translation Database and the Best Translated Book Awards. His articles and book reviews have appeared in a range of publications including The Believer, Publishing Perspectives, the Wall Street Journal culture blog, and Quarterly Conversation.
Moderator: Chenxin Jiang translates from Italian, German, and Chinese. Her most recent translation is for now i am sitting here growing transparent by Yau Ching (Zephyr); other recent translations include Tears of Salt: A Doctor’s Story by Pietro Bartolo and Lidia Tilotta (Norton), shortlisted for the 2019 Italian Prose in Translation Award, Volatile Texts: Us Two by Zsuzsanna Gahse (Dalkey Archive), and the PEN/Heim-winning The Cowshed: Memories of the Chinese Cultural Revolution by Ji Xianlin (NYRB). She is president of the board for the American Literary Translators Association.
With support from the National Endowment for the Arts and our donors, the Authors Guild Foundation is pleased to offer this program free to the public.
