About

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.

OUR FOUNDER

Yvette Neisser is the author of Grip, winner of the 2011 Gival Press Poetry Award. Her translations from Spanish include South Pole/Polo Sur by María Teresa Ogliastri and Difficult Beauty: Selected Poems by Luis Alberto Ambroggio. Her poems, translations, essays, and reviews have appeared in Foreign Policy in Focus, Virginia Quarterly Review, 101 Jewish Poems for the Third Millennium, and Split This Rock’s The Quarry. She has taught writing at George Washington University and The Writer’s Center. By day, she works in international development.

BOARD MEMBERS

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. He won the Paterson Poetry Prize; received fellowships from The Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, The US/Mexico Fund For Culture and the MacDowell Colony.

Translating Experience
La prision delicada (The Delicate Prison) Beatriz Russo (forthcoming, Nueva York Poetry Press)
Origami For A Rainy Day, The Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books, 2023)
33 Pandemic Poems ( Trente-tres poemes para temps de pandemie), Francois Deblue (in preparation)
Animal For The Eyes ( Un Animal para los ojos) Kenia Cano (in preparation)
Manual para enamorar una princesa (Manual to Catch A Princess) Chema Paz Gago (in preparation)
Sabiduria obscena Pauline Le Roy (in preparation)
Palabras provocadas Natacha Feliz Franco (in preparation)
Une bacchante à Paris Katia-Sofia Hakim (in preparation)
Contact him at [email protected]. X: @indranmx. Instagram: @Indran1960. Facebook: Indran Amirthanayagam.

Amirthanayagam hosts the Poetry Channel on Youtube. Here he is assembling an archive of essential contemporary poems. Amirthanayagam graduated in English literature from Haverford College. He has a Master's in journalism from the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University.

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), her second full-length poetry collection, 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 translation grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, she was a finalist for the Best Translated Book Award and the CLMP Firecracker Poetry Award. Decorated with the rank of Chevalier in the Order of the French Academic Palms, 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.

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.

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

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

Katie King is a journalist and literary translator with 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 in print anthologies published by Graywolf Press and Ecco Press. Her translation of the novel Someone Speaks Your Name by Luis García Montero, director of Spain’s Instituto Cervantes, was published by Swan Isle Press in January 2023. An excerpt from her translation of small red women, by Spanish novelist Marta Sanz was published by the European Literature Network’s journal Spanish Riveter in April 2023. Katie is the co-founder for the University of Washington Translation Studies Hub in and the Northwest Literary Translators in Seattle, and very proud to be joining the board of the DC-ALT. Follow Katie’s work on LinkedIn or on her website Translation3point0