ALTA and more

Ok, it's time I mention my time in Dallas last month at the ALTA (American Literary Translators Association) conference. Of course, it was enjoyable to spend some time in the Texas warmth after the cold we experience here in Detroit but the best part of the conference was meeting new people, catching up with friends, and hearing the work of writers new to me. Usually, I attend a lot of the bilingual readings but this year I only made it to a few, including the session focused on Russian writers where I heard Peter Golub read. Several of Peter's translations of poems by Danila Davydov will be published in Absinthe 9 next spring. Peter is an enthusiastic promoter of new Russian poetry and he will be blogging here on occasion.

In addition to the readings, I attended sessions on "How to Promote International Literature in the United States," "The Contemporary German Literary Scene," and "To Be Translated or Not to Be: Discussion of the PEN Report on the International Situation of Literary Translation." The latter session was particularly good and I recommend taking a look at Chad Post's comments about it at Three Percent.

I also had the privilege of joining Sean Cotter and a number of talented grad students at the University of Texas at Dallas for lunch on Saturday afternoon before catching my flight home. The students at UTD have been reading Absinthe submissions for the last year so it was great to meet in person and to discuss the vision for the journal.

I should also briefly mention that we now have several other bloggers here at Absinthe--such as friend and Absinthe editorial advisor Tom Kennedy who has been posting regularly with interesting news from Copenhagen--and you'll have the opportunity to hear from these excellent writers and translators over the coming weeks.