DC-Area Literary Translators (DC-ALT) is a network for literary translators in the Washington DC area. We are open to anyone with an interest in literary translation to/from any language. We provide a forum for local translators to get to know each other, discuss issues related to translation, and share information of interest. We also hold regular gatherings online and in person to discuss recent works in translation, host translation workshops, and more. Read more about us from the American Literary Translators Association.
DC-ALT LEADERSHIP
Coordinating Committee
Coordinating Committee
Yvette Neisser, the founder of DC-ALT, is is an award-winning poet and Spanish translator. Her co-translation of Venezuelan poet Maria Teresa Ogliastri’s From the Diary of Madame Mao won the 2025 Carnegie Mellon University Press Translation Prize and will be published in 2026. Previous translations include South Pole/Polo Sur by María Teresa Ogliastri and Difficult Beauty: Selected Poems by Luis Alberto Ambroggio. Her poems, translations, and essays have appeared in Foreign Policy in Focus, Tikkun, Virginia Quarterly Review, 101 Jewish Poems for the Third Millennium (anthology), and Split This Rock’s The Quarry. She has taught creative writing and translation at The George Washington University and The Writer’s Center (Bethesda,MD). https://www.yvetteneisser.net/
Nancy Naomi Carlson is a translator, poet, and essayist and has authored sixteen titles (eleven translated), including Khal Torabully’s Cargo Hold of Stars: Coolitude (Seagull Books, 2021), which won the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. An Infusion of Violets (Seagull, 2019) was named “New & Noteworthy” by the New York Times. Her co-translation with Esperanza Hope Sndyer of Wendy Guerra's Delicates (Seagull Books, 2023), was also noted by the New York Times. A recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts translation grants and an Albertine Translation grant, she was a finalist for the Best Translated Book Award, the CLMP Firecracker Poetry Award, and the Sarah Maguire Translation Prize. A founding board member of DC-ALT, she is the translations editor for On the Seawall. nancynaomicarlson.com
Jona Colson is a poet, educator, and literary translator. He is the translator of Aguas/Waters by Miguel Avero, a poet from Montevideo, Uruguay. His poetry collection, Said Through Glass, won the Jean Feldman Poetry Prize from the Washington Writers’ Publishing House, and he is the co-editor of This Is What America Looks Like: Poetry and Fiction from D.C., Maryland, and Virginia (2021). His poems, translations, and interviews have appeared in Ploughshares, The Southern Review, LitHub, and elsewhere. He is a professor of ESL at Montgomery College and lives in Washington, D.C. www.jonacolson.com
Carol Volk has published of over 30 literary and scholarly titles from the French, including works by Tahar Ben Jelloun, Amelie Nothomb, Luc Ferry, Jean Dubuffet, Jean Renoir, Eric Rohmer, and Patrick Chamoiseau, and contemporary classics such as The Failure of Political Islam by Olivier Roy. Her translations have been praised in The New York Times, the LA Times, the Washington Post, Publishers Weekly and elsewhere. A founding board member of DC-ALT, she recently concluded twenty-five years as a U.S. diplomat, with postings in Tel Aviv, Rome, Baghdad, Rabat, and Washington, DC, She has been awarded fellowships at MacDowell Colony and Yaddo, as well as the French Ministry of Culture. www.carolvolk.one
Advisors
Indran Amirthanayagam (Colombo, Ceylon) produced a unique record in 2020 by publishing three new poetry books written in three different languages: The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, New York), Sur l'île nostalgique (L'Harmattan, Paris) and Lírica a tiempo (Mesa Redonda, Lima). Amirthanayagam writes in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese and Haitian Creole. He has published twenty four poetry collections and recorded a spoken word/music album Rankont Dout. He publishes poetry books at Beltway Editions (www.beltwayeditions.com), edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and writes poetry columns every week for El Acento and Haiti En Marche. He also writes at indranamirthanayagam.blogspot.com.
Keith Cohen is a fiction writer and translator from the French. His translations include “The Laugh of the Medusa” and The Third Body by Hélène Cixous and A History of Virility by Alain Corbin, et al. He has taught French, English and comparative literature in France, Colombia and the U.S.
Barbara Goldberg has authored four prize-winning books of poetry, most recently, The Royal Baker’s Daughter. Her most recent translation of Hebrew literature is Scorched by the Sun: Poems of Moshe Dor. Goldberg and Dor have also translated and edited four anthologies of contemporary Israeli poetry. Her own poems appear in Best American Poetry, Gettysburg Review, Paris Review and Poetry. She has received two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and is Series Editor of the International Imprint for The Word Works. barbaragoldberg.net
Katie King is a journalist and literary translator who holds a PhD in Hispanic Studies. Her translations of Spanish poetry and prose have been published in Words Without Borders, World Literature Today, Columbia Journal, Translation Review, and The Spanish Riveter and in print anthologies by Graywolf Press and Ecco Press. Her full-length book translations include Someone Speaks Your Name (Swan Isle Press, January 2023) and One Year and Three Months (Broken Bowl Books, forthcoming October 2025), both by Luis García Montero, director of Spain’s Cervantes Institute and My Clavicle, (Unnamed Press, July 2025).
