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This event is a Core Conversation at the 2018 Pittsburgh Humanities Festival. See the full Core Conversation lineup here.

According to the European Council of Literary Translators’ Associations, only about 3% of all books published in English are translations from foreign languages. An inordinate number of important literary texts are not making their way into American readers’ hands. There are, of course, a number of reasons for this—from the political to the practical. Lauren Shapiro, Assistant Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University, will interview writer, poet and translator Michelle Gil-Montero. The discussion will focus on the current climate in America with regard to literary translation as well as the pleasures and difficulties of the task itself.

Michelle Gil-Montero translates contemporary Latin-American poetry, fiction and criticism, most recently This Blue Novel by Valerie Mejer Caso. She earned a bachelor of arts degree n English at Brown University and a master of fine arts degree in poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she studied on a Dean's Merit Scholarship. She has been awarded a Fulbright Scholar's Grant, as well as fellowships from the Howard Foundation, PEN, National Endowment for the Arts, and others. She has one book of poetry. Her poems and translations have appeared in numerous journals, including Conjunctions, Colorado Review, Words Without Borders, Hudson Review, and Jacket2, and in several anthologies.

Lauren Shaprio is interested in exploring the absurdity of contemporary American culture as it is lived by the individual, specifically the juxtaposition of reality television- and celebrity-infused lives with more pressing social and political concerns. She is the author of a collection of poetry, Easy Math, which was the winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Prize and the Debut-litzer Prize for Poetry, as well as a chapbook of poems, Yo-Yo Logic. She primarily teaches courses in poetry, but other interests include creative nonfiction, literary translation, and publishing. She has translated poetry and fiction from Spanish, Italian, Vietnamese, and Arabic into English; her current focus is on the work of several contemporary Latin American poets.

A production of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust and The Humanities Center at Carnegie Mellon University.