AUTHOR TALKS
HAYES TRANSLATION FESTIVAL
The Hayes Translation Festival features award-winning literary translators that will share their work and talk about the art of translation during three days of readings, class visits, and panel discussions. Presented in partnership with the W&M Creative Writing Program.
LISA DILLMAN & SILVIA TANDECIARZ
Tuesday, March 18, 7:00 PM, PBK Hall Studio Theatre, Free
Reception & Book Sale to Follow
ABOUT LISA DILLMAN
Lisa Dillman is based in Georgia, where she translates from Spanish and teaches at Emory University. Some of her publications include Touch System by Alejandra Costamagna, multiple books by Andrés Barba (Rain Over Madrid; August October; Luminous Republic; and Such Small Hands, winner of the 2018 Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize), The Bitch and Abyss by Pilar Quintana (both of which were National Book Awards finalists) and six books by Yuri Herrera (Signs Preceding the End of the World, The Transmigration of Bodies, A Silent Fury, Kingdom Cons, Ten Planets and Season of the Swamp). She is an avid but mediocre swimmer and dog freak.
ABOUT SILVIA R. TANDECIARZ
Silvia R. Tandeciarz holds a B.A. and M.A. in English from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in Literature from Duke University. She is Chancellor Professor of Modern Languages and Literatures and Vice Dean for Social Sciences and Interdisciplinary Studies at William & Mary, where she has worked since 1999. A translator, poet, and scholar in the field of Latin American Cultural Studies, her research focuses on the role memory plays in advancing democracy and human rights in post-conflict settings. Most recently, her English-language translation from Spanish, Taino, and Yoruba of Juana Goergen's collection of poetry, Sea in my Bones (2023, the87press), received the Poetry Book Society’s Winter 2023 Translation Choice Award.
PANEL DISCUSSION: TRANSLATION & THE STATE OF TRANSLATED LITERATURE
Wednesday, March 19, 4:00 PM, PBK Hall Studio Theatre, Free
ABOUT THE PANEL
This panel will explore the current landscape of translated literature, examining its role in fostering cross-cultural understanding. Panelists will discuss the challenges and nuances of translation as an art form, including issues of fidelity, creativity, and cultural context. They will also address the visibility of translators, the global market for translated works, and how publishers and readers engage with translated literature.
All six authors featured in the Hayes Translation Festival will participate in this panel discussion.
AARON ROBERTSON & ARUNI KASHYAP
Wednesday, March 19, 6:00 PM, PBK Hall Studio Theatre, Free
Reception & Book Sale to Follow
ABOUT AARON ROBERTSON
Aaron Robertson is a writer, editor, and translator of Italian literature. He is the author of The Black Utopians: Searching for Paradise and the Promised Land in America (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). His translation of Igiaba Scego’s Beyond Babylon (Two Lines Press) was shortlisted for the 2020 PEN Translation Prize and the National Translation Award, and in 2021, he was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts grant. His work has appeared in the New York Times, The Nation, Foreign Policy, n+1, The Point, and Literary Hub, among other publications. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
ABOUT ARUNI KASHYAP
Aruni Kashyap is the author of the story collection The Way You Want To Be Loved (Gaudy Boy Press 2024) and How to Date a Fanatic (Harper Via 2026). His poetry collection, There is No Good Time for Bad News, was nominated for the 58th Georgia Author of the Year Awards 2022, among other accolades. His translation projects have been finalists for the Armory Square Prize for South Asian Literature in Translation 2023 and VOW Book Awards 2024. His work has appeared in Catapult, Bitch Media, The New York Times, The Guardian UK, and others. He has also published a novel and three novellas in Assamese. He is an Associate Professor of English & Creative Writing and the Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Georgia, Athens.
BORIS DRALYUK & YE CHUN
Thursday, March 20, 6:00 PM, PBK Hall Studio Theatre, Free
Reception & Book Sale to Follow
ABOUT BORIS DRALYUK
Boris Dralyuk is the author of My Hollywood and Other Poems and the translator of Isaac Babel, Andrey Kurkov, and other authors. His work has appeared in the NYRB, the TLS, The New Yorker, Best American Poetry 2023, and elsewhere, and he is the recipient, most recently, of the 2022 Gregg Barrios Translation Prize from the National Book Critics Circle and of a 2024 Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is an Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Tulsa, a Tulsa Artist Fellow, and the editor in chief of Nimrod International Journal.
ABOUT YE CHUN
Ye Chun is a bilingual Chinese American writer and literary translator. Her novel, Straw Dogs of the Universe (Catapult, 2023), received the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize and was longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. Her story collection, Hao (Catapult, 2021), also longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, was named a Lit Hub’s Best Book of the Year. She has also published two poetry collections, a novel in Chinese, as well as four volumes of translations. A recipient of an NEA Fellowship and three Pushcart Prizes, she is an associate professor at Providence College and lives in Providence, Rhode Island.
BRIAN CASTLEBERRY
Friday, March 21, 5:00 PM, Tucker Theater, Free
Reception & Book Sale to Follow
The Californians by Brian Castleberry is a sweeping, ambitious novel spanning a century. In 2024, Tobey Harlan, a down-on-his-luck waiter, steals three paintings by famed artist Di Stiegl, hoping to sell them and start anew after losing everything in a wildfire. A century earlier, Klaus Aaronsohn reinvents himself as Klaus von Stiegl, a German-Jewish immigrant turned silent film director. Meanwhile, Di Stiegl, Klaus’s granddaughter, rises as an artist in gritty 1980s NYC. As America yields the presidency to a Hollywood cowboy, Diane will reflect America’s most urgent and hypocritical years back to itself, uneasily finding critical adoration as well as great fame and wealth.
Nuanced and textured, gloriously funny, a critical portrait of the collective American consciousness that has brought us to today, The Californians showcases Brian Castleberry as an inventive, stylish storyteller and a sharp observer of the human condition.
ABOUT BRIAN CASTLEBERRY
Brian Castleberry’s first novel, Nine Shiny Objects, was a New York Times Editor’s Choice selection and was longlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award. His other work has been published in the Southern Review, Narrative, LitHub, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. He is an Associate Professor of English at William & Mary.