Meeting with Elisa Wouk Almino
On the Brazilian Poet Ana C.; on saudade
Fondation Jan Michalski © Tonatiuh Ambrosetti
Event completed
English
Free, on registration
Elisa Wouk Almino talks about her work as a writer and literary translator from Portuguese. She focuses on the two projects that she worked on during her residency.
She discusses her translation of Luvas de pelica (Kid Gloves), an iconic work of prose poetry by Ana Cristina Cesar (1952–83). Ana C., as she is known in Brazil, published her poetry in the 1970s and early ’80s, working also as a translator, journalist, and literary critic in Rio de Janeiro. Today she is one of the country’s most influential poets. Ana C. was also close friends with Elisa’s mother, Bia Wouk. In addition to translating Kid Gloves, Elisa is also translating a selection of letters Ana C. sent to Bia Wouk around the time she was writing her book.
Elisa talks also about how her work as a translator and writer overlaps and how it led her to her next book proposal, which centers on a famously untranslatable word in Portuguese, saudade.
Biography
Elisa Wouk Almino is a writer, editor, and translator based in Los Angeles. Currently, she is the senior editor at the arts magazine Hyperallergic and an editor for Harlequin Creature’s translation platform. She is also the editor of an artist monograph for Rizzoli, forthcoming in 2019. In 2017, she published her translations of the Brazilian poet Ana Martins Marques with Scrambler Books. She has taught an Introduction to Translation course with the literary magazine Catapult in 2018