Boston Book Festival 2018

In this international and multilingual poetry event, three Boston-area literary translators--Catherine Ciepiela, Jim Kates, and Elizabeth Oehlkers--will read and discuss the work of major contemporary poets from Russia, Germany, France, Kazakhstan, and elsewhere. The translators will illuminate how the process of translation bridges multiple divides: language first, but also culture, ethnicity, nationality, gender, and more. The readers will also discuss the craft, challenges, and pleasures of literary translation. Poets to be discussed will include Polina Barskova and Mikhail Aizenberg from Russia, the Turkish-German poets Zafer Şenocak and Zehra Çirak, Kazakhstani poet Aigerim Tazhi, Jean-Pierre Rosnay from France, and others. All three translator-presenters have published with Zephyr Press, a leading poetry translation press based in Brookline that is sponsoring the event.