For Women in Translation Month, observed annually during the month of August, we asked the many independent literary presses and magazines that make up our membership to share with us some of the literature they have published that is both written and translated by women. (Stay tuned for our National Translation Month reading list in September, which will feature additional works in translation!)
Nonfiction
Voyager: Constellations of Memory by Nona Fernández
Translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer
Graywolf Press | 2023
In this lyric essay inspired by the mission of the Voyager spacecrafts, “Fernández finds a new container for her profound and surreal reckonings with the past.”
Translated from the English by Alexandra Viteri Arturo and Alejandra Martorell
53rd State Press | 2023
Guía de campo de iLANDing is a Spanish-language translation of A Field Guide to iLANDing, published in 2017 by 53rd State Press.
Return to Latvia by Marina Jarre
Translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein
New Vessel Press | 2023
In this “part travelogue, part memoir, part ruminative essay,” Jarre “looks for traces of her murdered father whom she never bid farewell.”
Migratory Birds by Mariana Oliver
Translated from the Spanish by Julia Sanches
Transit Books | 2021
In these essays, Oliver “trains her gaze on migration in its many forms, moving between real cities and other more inaccessible territories.”
Kissing the Sword: A Prison Memoir by Shahrnush Parsipur
Translated from the Persian by Sara Khalili
Feminist Press | 2013
This memoir “captures the surreal experience of serving time without being charged with a crime, and witnessing the systematic destruction of any and all opposition to fundamentalist power.”
Fiction
The Book Censor’s Library by Bothayna Al-Essa
Translated from the Arabic by Sawad Hussain and Ranya Abdelrahman
Restless Books | 2024
Al-Essa’s novel is “a perilous and fantastical satire of banned books, secret archives, and the looming eye of an all-powerful government.”
From Savagery by Alejandra Banca
Translated from the Spanish by Katie Brown
Restless Books | 2024
This debut novel “throws its arms around a displaced generation of young Venezuelan migrants, reveling in the clamor and beauty of their day-by-day survival.”
Translated from the Croatian by Jennifer Zoble
Feminist Press | 2023
In this short fiction collection, “eleven stories interweave feminist critique and science fiction into an irreverent portrait of our past, present, and future.”
Blue Notes by Anne Cathrine Bomann
Translated from the Danish by Caroline Waight
Book*hug Press | 2024
This novel is “a literary thriller about grief, love, science, and societal norms.”
Between Two Silences/Entre dos silencios by Hilma Contreras
Translated from the Spanish by Judith Kerman
Mayapple Press | 2013
These short stories “are often mysterious and quirky, with a shimmer of heat and fire, a glisten of water and a frisson which comes from not quite knowing where you are or what’s about to happen.”
A Strange Woman by Leylâ Erbil
Translated from the Turkish by Amy Spangler and Nermin Menemencioğlu
Deep Vellum | 2022
This debut novel “by one of Turkey’s most radical female authors tells the story of an aspiring intellectual in a complex, modernizing country.”
Pale Shadows by Dominique Fortier
Translated from the French by Rhonda Mullins
Coach House Books | 2024
This novel tells “the story of the trio of women who brought the first collection of Emily Dickinson’s poems out of the shadows.”
New and Selected Stories by Cristina Rivera Garza
Translated from the Spanish by Sarah Booker
Dorothy, a publishing project | 2022
This collection features stories “from three collections spanning over 30 years and including new writing not yet published in Spanish.”
Living Things by Munir Hachemi
Translated from the Spanish by Julia Sanches
Coach House Books | 2024
According to James Greer, this book is “a novel posing as a journal posing as a meditation on the function of the journal that playfully interrogates form and content in art.”
I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman
Translated from the French by Ros Schwartz
Transit Books | 2022
Now back in print, I Who Have Never Known Men “is a haunting, heartbreaking post-apocalyptic novel of female friendship and intimacy, and the lengths people will go to maintain their humanity in the face of devastation.”
On the Origin of Species and Other Stories by Bo-Young Kim
Translated from the Korean by Sora Kim-Russell and Joungmin Lee Comfort
Kaya Press | 2021
This short fiction collection “teems with human and non-human beings, all of whom are striving to survive through evolution, whether biologically, technologically or socially.”
Translated from the French by Tamsin Black
Bellevue Literary Press | 2013
According to David Malouf, this novel is “an adult study of pain, thwarted affection, and guarded privacies in a world at the edge of violent public breakdown.”
Translated from the Spanish by Sophie Hughes and Annie McDermott
Two Lines Press | 2024
This debut novel “is class-conscious horror that drags generations of monsters into the sun.”
Lovemaking in the Footnotes by Mahsa Mohebali
Translated from the Persian by Saba Riazi
Hanging Loose Press | 2020
Winner of the Loose Translations Award, this short story collection about life in contemporary Tehran is banned in Iran.
The Case of Cem by Vera Mutafchieva
Translated from the Bulgarian by Angela Rodel
Sandorf Passage | 2024
This novel, “presented as a series of depositions by historical figures before a court, tells a straightforward tale: Upon the death of Ottoman Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror in 1481, his eldest son Bayezid takes the throne.”
The Girl Before Her by Line Papin
Translated from the French by Adriana Hunter and Ly Lan Dill
Kaya Press | 2023
This novel “offers a window onto the existential anguish of displacement as experienced by a child on the cusp of becoming a woman.”
Translated from the German by Lucy Jones
Transit Books | 2023
Reimann’s first novel to appear in English is “a story of sibling love ruptured by the Iron Curtain.”
The Red Book of Farewells by Pirkko Saisio
Translated from the Finnish by Mia Spangenberg
Two Lines Press | 2023
This autofictional novel is “a mesmerizing account of radical politics and sexual awakening in a series of farewells—to her mother, to the idealism of youth, to friends and lovers, and finally to her grown daughter.”
Translated from the Chinese by Natascha Bruce
Graywolf Press | 2023
Owlish is “a fantastically eerie debut novel that is also a bold exploration of life under oppressive regimes.”
Translated from the Dutch by Kristen Gehrman
Sandorf Passage | 2024
Originally published in 1969 and set in 1950s Suriname, this novel “makes it all too clear what women have had to, and continue to, sacrifice in the name of claiming their identity.”
Translated from the Chinese by Jennifer Feeley
Feminist Press | 2024
Tongueless is a psychological thriller following two rival teachers that “sheds light on the current political situation in Hong Kong.”
Poetry
Translated from the French by Sarah Riggs
Nightboat Books | 2019
In this poetry collection, which received the Griffin Poetry Prize, “war and love intertwine.”
The White Islands / Las Islas Blancas by Marjorie Agosín
Translated from the Spanish from Jacqueline Nanfito
Swan Isle Press | 2016
This collection is “a poetic journey through the islands of the Mediterranean that served as homes and refuge for the Sephardic Jews after the Alhambra Decree.”
Anxiety of Words: Contemporary Poetry by Korean Women
Translated from the Korean by Don Mee Choi
Zephyr Press | 2006
The three featured poets in this collection—Ch’oe Sung-ja, Kim Hyesoon, and Yi Yon-ju— “defiantly insist that poetry can be part of social change—indeed, that it must be.”
Dreams and Other Ailments by Teresa Bevin
Translated from the Spanish by Teresa Bevin
Gival Press | 2001
This bilingual collection “provides a descriptive panorama that mixes the living with the dead and dream with reality so that boundaries of perception become blurred.”
Translated from the Swedish by Jennifer Hayashida
Ugly Duckling Presse | 2023
This abecedarian “is a maelstrom of voices cast in the underwater shadows and nuclear light of the Anthropocene.”
In the Arms of the Father by Flavia Cosma
Translated from the Romanian by Flavia Cosma with Charles Siedlecki
Červená Barva Press | 2021
This book “gathers between its covers the permanent osmosis of the poet’s state of mind and consciousness with the divinity and the wealth of nature.”
Translated from the Spanish by Robin Myers
Wave Books | 2022
Copy is “a prose poem sequence that insinuates an experience of violent removal: a person’s disappearance from a country, from normal life, and forcible reintegration into a new social and existential configuration.”
On Centaurs & Other Poems by Zuzanna Ginczanka
Translated from the Polish by Alex Braslavsky
World Poetry Books | 2023
Originally published in 1936 and featured here in a bilingual edition, On Centaurs & Other Poems “introduces the full scope of Ginzcanka’s poetic vision and prophetic voice to English-language readers for the first time.”
Translated from the Galician by Erín Moure
Circumference Books | 2019
In this book, Gómez “renders her mother and her mother tongue, her land and its changes with tender, sharp insight.”
Translated from the Korean by Sue Hyon Bae
Black Ocean | 2023
This poetry collection “is an extended meditation on the heartbreak of growing up and being alive.”
In the Glittering Maw: Selected Poems by Joyce Mansour
Translated from the French by C. Francis Fisher
World Poetry Books | 2024
According to Mark Polizzotti, “Mansour’s later poems give fresh voice to a fierce, passionate, sensuous, scandalous cry that has strained to be heard in the Anglophone world for over half a century.”
Translated from the Russian by Maria Bloshteyn and Boris Dralyuk
Červená Barva Press | 2022
According to Anne Marie Macari, “Mashinski’s poems in Giornata inhabit the landscape of elegy and exile, as well as the actual landscape of rural America.”
That Salt on the Tongue to Say Mangrove by Silvina López Medin
Translated from the Spanish by Jasmine V. Bailey
Carnegie Mellon University Press | 2021
That Salt on the Tongue to Say Mangrove “draws on the in-between nature of these trees to explore spaces between.”
Earth’s Horizons by Michèle Métail
Translated from the French by Marcella Durand
Black Square Editions | 2020
According to Michael Palmer, in this poetry collection, Métail “dazzles with her disposition of strict formal constraints in service to verbal invention.”
Translated from the Spanish by Michelle Gil-Montero
Ugly Duckling Presse | 2022
Negroni’s poetry “shines in its utopian desire to write the ‘unwritten words,’ revealing language at its most estranged, most wanting.”
Translated from the French by Erín Moure
Book*hug Press | 2024
This is “a book-length poem that plunges us more deeply into the notion of the idyll and into the polyhedric structure of love.”
Plum Blossom Wine by Li Qingzhao
Translated from the Chinese by Sibyl James and Kang Xuepei
Empty Bowl Press | 2024
These poems “full of wistful longing resonate across the centuries like a temple bell just rung.”
The Dragonfly by Amelia Rosselli
Translated from the Italian by Roberta Antognini and Deborah Woodard
Entre Ríos Books | 2023
This long canto “hovers on the edge of the surreal, where meaning continually multiplies and then negates.”
Translated from the Russian by Martha M. F. Kelly
Slant Books | 2023
The poems in this collection form “a lyric sequence infused with folk wisdom and anchored in moral courage.”
Pray to the Empty Wells by Iryna Shuvalova
Translated from the Ukranian by Olena Jennings and Iryna Shuvalova
Lost Horse Press | 2019
Shuvalova’s first book-length poetry collection in English is “deeply rooted in Ukraine’s folk culture” and “re-mixes traditional spirituality with pulsating eroticism and an acute awareness of the natural environment.”
A Field of Foundlings by Iryna Starovoyt
Translated from the Ukrainian by Grace Mahoney
Lost Horse Press | 2017
In this collection of her selected poems, Starovoyt “investigates Ukraine’s suppressed generational memory of the 20th century and the new context of its retelling in Eastern Europe.”
New and Selected Poems of Cecilia Vicuña by Cecilia Vicuña
Translated by Rosa Alcalá, Esther Allen, Suzanne Jill Levine, Edwin Morgan, Urayoán Noel, James O’Hern, Anne Twitty, Eliot Weinberger, and Christopher Winks
Kelsey Street Press | 2018
In this collection, Vicuña and her translators “are artist witnesses to a natural world that is a storehouse of sacred words, seeds, threads, and songs.”
Unmade Hearts: My Sor Juana by July Westhale
Small Harbor Publishing | 2024
In this poetry collection, “Westhale’s translations and marginal notes on Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s sonnets conjure a brilliant dialogue across desires, languages, and centuries.”
Subsisters: Selected Poems by Uljana Wolf
Translated from the German by Sophie Selta
Belladonna* Collaborative | 2017
According to Mónica de la Torre, “This is poetry as translation, translation as poetry, and echolalia of the best sort.”
Pillar of Books by Moon Bo Young
Translated from the Korean by Hedgie Choi
Black Ocean | 2021
Full of surrealism and humor, this debut collection in English “insists that you, as a reader, put down your expectations of what should be important or serious.”
Anthologies & Multi-Genre Collections
Translated from the Korean by Don Mee Choi, Sawako Nakayasu, Joyelle McSweeney, and Jack Jung
Wave Books | 2020
Edited by Don Mee Choi, this selection of poems, stories, and essays by “one of the great revolutionary legacies of modern Korean literature” is a “visionary and daring response to personal and national trauma.”
The Soul Conveys Itself in Shadow/El alma se mueve en la sombra
Stenen Press | 2023
Edited by Kythe Maryam Heller and Carolina Gómez-Montoya, this anthology “features creative partnerships that celebrate translation as equitable, intimate, and necessary.”
A Winding Line: Three Hebrew Poets
Translated from the Hebrew by Tsipi Keller
Zephyr Press | 2023
In this collection, featured poets Maya Bejerano, Sharron Hass, and Anat Zecharia explore “biblical texts, political realities, landscapes, writing, and diverse personal experiences.”
Literary Magazines
“Literature’s Lost Profiles: The Oblique Subjects of Parabiography” by Elizabeth Brogden
Full Stop | 2023
This essay begins, “Midway through Exposition, the first volume of Nathalie Léger’s trio of feminist biographies, the author-narrator recalls a poignant memory from her girlhood.”
“The Hottest Summer” by Laura Freudenthaler
Translated from the German by Tess Lewis
The Hudson Review | 2022
This story begins, “The hottest summer on record is also my quietest. I sit on the wooden bench next to the back gate and wait.”
Translated from the Jejueo by Helen Hwayeon
New England Review | 2024
The poem “A Game of Word Chain” begins, “Let’s play, play a game of word chain. / What’s that thing, flapflailing behind the mountain?”
Translated from the Korean by Emily Bettencourt
New England Review | 2024
The poem “Wrecked Classroom” begins, “The kids were on a field trip / They sat quietly in their cabins like they did in their classrooms….”
Translated from the German by Katie Rhiannon Jones
ANMLY | 2022
The poem “The Dream” begins, “We lie in a sea-deep lake / Knowing nothing of sorrow and heartache….”
Translated from the Korean by Cindy Juyoung Ok
The Hopkins Review | 2024
The poem “Comic Ventriloquist” begins, “Wearing a black hat and / carrying a black cane and / fluttering the tail of a black tuxedo / as though conducting a funeral….”
“schmelzpunkt” / “melting point” by Nadja Küchenmeister
Translated from the German by Aimee Chor
Apple Valley Review | 2023
This poem begins, “you’re always getting something or taking it away / a paper napkin, mustard, the small knife….”
Translated from the Spanish by Allison A. deFreese
Another Chicago Magazine | 2023
The first poem begins, “some questions land on your forehead like a blow from a / wolf’s paw.”
from Traces by Samira Negrouche
Translated from the French by Nancy Naomi Carlson
The Georgia Review | 2023
This poem begins, “A cloud of pilgrims is moving toward us, the whiteness of their robes scarcely matters….”
Translated from the Isthmus Zapotec and Spanish by Wendy Call
Terrain.org | 2018
The first poem begins, “Our home was a single cloud / we were one / song of joy / we were one heart…”
Translated from the Italian by Julia Nelsen
Another Chicago Magazine | 2023
The first poem begins, “The mind creates / you from minds, from bodies, / your, / yours, // the you that is a forest where / what is nameless hides….”
“Words and Kisses” by Kim Sehee
Translated from the Korean by Paige Aniyah Morris
The Georgia Review | 2021
This story begins, “Go Hyunjin graduated from college, took a job as a team secretary at an insurance firm, and got married. The man she married was an actuary.” (Read an accompanying interview with the translator.)
Three Poems by Ingela Strandberg
Translated from the Swedish by Ingela Strandberg
Terrain.org | 2018
The poem “The Nightman” begins, “I’m sleeping / with the Nightman // He visits every darkness / Slipping his damp essence / into my sleep….”
Translated from the Arabic by Maitha and Maha
Wellspringwords | 2021
This poem begins, “A path / Over there, away from sight / Celestial spirits descend upon this Earth….”
From Herostories by Kristín Svava Tómasdóttir
Translated from the Icelandic by K. B. Thors
ANMLY | 2023
This poem begins, “a physician by nature // the other hand of the district doctor // at once midwife and healer….”
Translated from the Chinese by Winnie Zeng
The Hopkins Review | 2024
The poem “The World Has Been Raining All Night” begins, “The world has been raining all night, / a usual night—some are wasting away good lives in front of the television, / some drown and float up in wine glasses….”
