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Feminism

Happy “Women in Translation” Month!

Celebrate Women in Translation with these new works in translation from female authors.

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Rachel Cordasco

Staff Writer

Rachel Cordasco has a Ph.D in literary studies and currently works as a developmental editor. When she's not at her day job or chasing three kids, she's writing reviews and translating Italian speculative fiction. She runs the website sfintranslation.com, and can be found on Facebook and Twitter.

View All posts by Rachel Cordasco

August is “Women in Translation Month” (#WITMonth), and we should thank Meytal Radzinski (@Biblibio) for hosting and promoting this awareness effort on her blog.

As Meytal notes (and I myself have tweeted and written), a disproportionately small number of books in English translation are by women (and the numbers for sci-fi in particular? It’s pretty depressing). So in this post, I’m going to do my part to encourage more translations of women writers by listing a cross-section of those books by women that have been translated into English (or newly-released in paperback) this year.

And if you’ve been reading women in translation, tell us about it in the comments!

nadjaArgentina

Extracting the Stone of Madness: Poems 1962 – 1972 by Alejandra Pizarnik, translated by Yvette Siegert (New Directions, 384 pages, September 29)

Austria
Sometimes I Lie and Sometimes I Don’t  by Nadja Spiegel, translated by Rachel McNicoll (Dalkey Archive Press, 144 pages, September 8)
Denmark
Rock, Paper, Scissors  by Naja Marie Aidt, translated by K.E. Semmel (Open Letter, 450 pages, August 11)
Finland
The Lion of Justice by Leena Lehtolainen, translated by Jenni
Salmi (AmazonCrossing, 292 pages, June 9)
France
Thérèse and Isabelle by Violette Leduc, translated by Sophie Lewis (The Feminist Press at CUNY, 176 pages, June 30)
Germany

Decompression by Juli Zeh, translated by John Cullen (Anchor, 272 pages, June 23)

Hong Kong
Not Written Words by Xi Xi, translated by Jennifer Feeley (Zephyr Press, 168 pages, September 15)
aidtIsrael
Reality Crumbs: Selected Poems  by Raquel Chalfi, translated by Tsipi Keller (Excelsior Editions, 252 pages, September 1)
Italy
Limbo by Melania G. Mazzucco, translated by Virginia Jewiss (Picador, 384 pages, November 10)
Japan
Salad Anniversary by Machi Tawara, translated by Julie Winters Carpenter (Pushkin Collection, 112 pages, June 9)
Norway
Monsterhuman by Kjersti Skomsvold, translated by Becky L. Crook (Dalkey Archive Press, 608 pages, November 10)
Russia
The Mountain and the Wall  by Alisa Ganieva, translated by Carol Apollonio (Deep Vellum Publishing, 264 pages, June 30)