This week, our editors from around the globe report on a translation competition and an event to support Ukraine in Japan, the publication of a harrowing new memoir from Guatemala, and a celebration of women poets in El Salvador. Read on to find out more!
Mary Hillis, Educational Arm Assistant, reporting from Japan
Give Artists a Voice was held on March 15 at the Goethe-Institut in Tokyo and live-streamed on social media. Organized by EUNIC Japan and E.U. member cultural institutions and cultural departments in Japan, artists expressed their support of Ukraine through music, film, poetry, dance, and talks. Joining from Kharkiv, contemporary artist Olia Fedorova read text in Ukrainian documenting life during the war. Poet Marie Iljašenko read “Five poems from collection St. Outdoor” in Czech and Yoko Tawada read “Auszeit von Menschheit” (“Timeout from Humanity”) in German. Michal Hvorecký, author of the novel Troll (published in Slovak in 2017), delivered a message on disinformation and literary translation as a vehicle for deeper understanding.
Earlier in the month, at Bungaku Days Spring 2022, the award winners of the JLPP (Japanese Literature Publishing Project) sixth International Translation Competition were recognized: English grand prize winner Grant Lloyd and Spanish grand prize winner Eduardo López Herrero. Contestants translated two texts, “Namiuchigiwa made” by Maki Kashimada in the fiction category and “Ojigi” by Kuniko Mukōda in the criticism and essay category. The original texts and winning translations can be read on the JLPP website.
Designed to both recognize and provide support for emerging translators of contemporary Japanese literature, the event began with a prerecorded video showcasing comments from the judges and messages from the top three awardees in English and Spanish respectively. Former contest winners Polly Barton and Sam Bett joined this year’s winner, Grant Lloyd, for a symposium on the topic of becoming a translator, moderated by Yoshio Hitomi of Waseda University. They discussed Lloyd’s prize-winning translations and also analyzed the challenges of working with stories, novels, and essays from Japanese, while revisiting steps on their journeys to becoming literary translators. The publishing panel was moderated by Allison Markin Powell and included Anne Meadows (Granta Books), Yuka Igarashi (Graywolf Press), and Tynan Kogane (New Directions), who discussed their points of view on pitching, the acquisition process, and barriers to publishing literature in English translation. The seventh edition of the competition is now in progress and entries are being accepted in English and French.
Japanese literature was also the focus of an online event hosted by White Whale Bookstore in Pennsylvania with an impressive lineup of guests to celebrate the launch of Monkey: New Writing from Japan, Vol. 2: Travel. Formerly known as Monkey Business, the publication showcases work from writers and translators as well as graphic artists (read a review of Monkey, Vol. 1: Food). The evening began with a discussion between Aoko Matsuda and Polly Barton, which was moderated by Monkey founder and editor Motoyuki Shibata. Matsuda’s book, Where the Wild Ladies Are, was translated by Barton and published by Soft Skull Press in 2020. The U.S. edition of Barton’s memoir Fifty Sounds was released this month from Liveright. The duo discussed influences on their work before giving a bilingual reading from the story The Most Boring Red on Earth, which appears in the newest issue of the literary magazine. Managing editor Meg Taylor conducted a short interview with Pittsburgh-based author Adam Ehrlich Sachs, whose short stories from his book Inherited Disorders have been translated to Japanese by Matsuda.
José García Escobar, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Central America
Recently in Guatemala, Piedra Santa released Mamá, No Estoy Muerta (Mom, I’m Not Dead) by Guatemalan-French author Mariela SR – Coline Fanon. In the memoir, Mariela tells the remarkable and harrowing tale of how an elaborate network of child trafficking—which included the Guatemalan president—kidnapped her and countless other children in Guatemala during the 1980s and 1990s and sold her to a couple in Belgium. Mariela later found her biological family in 2017. She learned that members of this trafficking network told her mother that her daughter had died at childbirth.
Earlier this year, Guatemalan writer Denise Phé-Funchal was named the new director of Editorial Cultura. Phé-Funchal is the author of books such as Buenas costumbres and Ana sonríe, and her work has been translated into English and featured across Latin America. Editorial Cultura is Guatemala’s only state-owned publishing house and where renowned authors such as Sabino Esteban, Vania Vargas, and Wingston González made their debuts.
Nestor Gomez, Editor-at-Large, reporting from El Salvador
Two nonprofit organizations—Casa de la Cultura El Salvador in partnership with Festival Grito de Mujer—are holding a weekly series of poetry readings in San Salvador to celebrate Women’s History month in March. The series showcases the work of Salvadoran women writers and shares the stories and struggles of women throughout El Salvador’s history.
The most recent poetry reading featured notable writers such as Alexandra Lytton Regalado, a translator and editor of Kalina—a publishing house dedicated to featuring work in multiple languages from El Salvador and the Salvadoran diaspora—and Kenny Rodriguez, a poet who spoke of young Salvadoran women today as less afraid to be revolutionary. Also featured at the reading were new poets Ana María Rivas, who in 2016 won first prize in the “La Flauta de los Pétalos” contest for poetry, and Franka Vaquerano, whose venture into poetry began in 2015 when she joined a poetry workshop ran by renowned poet, Otoniel Guevara.
The reading was made even more special with the inclusion of Argelia Marxelly, a teacher and prose writer, who read work written by her daughter, Leyla de Quintana, known to all Salvadorans as la Amada Libertad. Marxelly recounted the life of Amada Libertad, who died on July 11, 1991, while serving for the guerrilla army during the Salvadoran Civil War.
Amada Libertad’s love of poetry began when she was eleven years old and would scribble poems in her notebook at school. Marxelly, who always read her daughter’s work, encouraged her to enter a poetry contest. Amada Libertad did not win the contest and did not engage with poetry again until six years later. At seventeen, she met Otoniel Guevara, a fellow student and young poet with strong political ideas who would later join the guerrilla army in the Salvadoran Civil War. He sparked her interest in poetry again as well as a critical eye towards the state of her home country El Salvador. In 1988, Amada Libertad joined the guerrilla army, moved to Nicaragua, and reignited her passion for poetry by reading the works of Julio Cortázar and César Vallejo. 1988 was also the year Amada Libertad wrote her first book of poetry, Ausencio.
Marxelly recounted how because Amada Libertad moved around with the guerrilla army, it was hard keeping in contact. People such as Kenny Rodriguez helped Marxelly by delivering photos and letters between mother and daughter. There were several times when Marxelly tried to keep her daughter away from the civil war. Amada Libertad was offered an academic scholarship to a school in Italy and had also been granted leave from the guerrilla army to stay with her mother. But Amada Libertad refused to stay out of the conflict. She insisted, “There’s a war happening in my country. I must do something.”
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