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
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. He writes poetry columns every week for El Acento and Haiti En Marche. He also writes at indranamirthanayagam.blogspot.com.
Nancy Naomi Carlson, winner of the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize, is a translator, poet, and essayist, having authored fourteen titles (nine translated), including Khal Torabully’s Cargo Hold of Stars: Coolitude (Seagull Books, 2021). An Infusion of Violets (Seagull, 2019) was named “New & Noteworthy” by the New York Times. Her latest co-translation with Esperanza Hope Sndyer of Wendy Guerra's Delicates, was also noted by the New York Times. A recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts translation grants, she was a finalist for the Best Translated Book Award and the CLMP Firecracker Poetry Award. She is the translations editor for On the Seawall. nancynaomicarlson.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.
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
Marguerite Feitlowitz: Over twenty years Marguerite Feitlowitz has distinguished herself as one of the US’s most passionate translators of theatrical texts from the Americas. She is also one of an esteemed handful of activist-authors reporting with depth and conviction on dissension and its role in the cultural and civic dialogue nationally and internationally. http://margueritefeitlowitz.com/
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
Yvette Neisser, the founder of DC-ALT, is the author of two poetry collections, Iron into Flower (2022) and Grip (2011 Gival Press Poetry Award). Her translations from Spanish include SouthPole/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 writing at The George Washington University and The Writer’s Center (Bethesda, MD). By day, she works in international development.
Carol Volk is an acclaimed translator of over 30 literary, non-fiction, 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. Her work has been lauded in The New York Times, the LA Times, the Washington Post, and elsewhere. She is a founding board member of DC-ALT and also serves as a U.S. diplomat, with postings in Tel Aviv, Rome, Baghdad, and Rabat, among other assignments. www.carolvolk.one
