Caponeu Presents: The Art and Politics of Translation
A CONVERSATION with
Kate Briggs and Jen Calleja
M2, GRAND PARADE, UNIVERSITY OF BRIGHTON,
4 June, 17.30-19.30
Register to attend this CAPPE event in person.
Kate Briggs grew up in Somerset, UK, and lives and works in Rotterdam, NL. She is the translator of two volumes of Roland Barthes’s lecture and seminar notes at the Collège de France: The Preparation of the Novel and How to Live Together. This Little Art, her genre-bending essay on the art of translation, was published by Fitzcarraldo Editions in 2017. In 2021, she was awarded a Windham-Campbell Prize. Her debut novel, The Long Form, was published by Fitzcarraldo Editions in 2023 and shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize the same year. Her recent translation of Lili is Crying, Hélène Bessette’s debut novel, explores the troubling relationship between Lili and her mother Charlotte, evoking the pain of thwarted love and promise of renewal. Lauded for its boundary-pushing style, when published in 1953, Lili is Crying announced Bessette’s singular take on the ‘poetic novel’. Kate Brigg’s translation is the first of Bessette’s work into English
Jen Calleja has been shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize and the Schlegel-Tieck Prize for German-language literature translation. Her own books include the translator memoir Fair (Prototype), Vehicle: a verse novel (Prototype), Goblinhood: Goblin as a Mode (Rough Trade Books) and Dust Sucker (Makina Books). Fair: The Life-Art of Translation, is Calleja’s satirical account of learning the art of translation, of being a bookworker in the publishing industry, of family and of class. The book moves from personal memory to exploration of the role of the translator in publishing. It considers fairness, hard work, how we define success, and what it means to make a living as an artist. Fair discusses literary translation as a creative and subjective practice that upholds the ethics and politics at play when translating another’s work. Fair, a singularly inventive book, blurs the lines between memoir, autofiction, satire and polemic.
CAPONEU, coordinated by University of Zagreb, brings together 8 partners, 5 of which have received funding from the European Union’s Horizon research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101094658. The other three partners, University of Brighton, Cambridge University and Autonomy are funded by Innovate UK as part of the Guarantee Fund which underwrites successful Horizon Europe bids involving UK partners. The Grant Reference numbers are: 10061848, 10051867, 10073486.
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