Songs for the Gusle, my translation of French author Prosper Mérimée’s 1827 hoax, La Guzla, was published by Frayed Edge Press in March 2023. Excerpts are available on the Spurl Editions blog and the Translators Aloud YouTube channel.
My translations of prose and poetry from French and Spanish have appeared in AGNI 94 (print edition only; related blog post here), The Southern Review, ANMLY, Another Chicago Magazine, Circumference, Columbia Journal, Firmament, Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry, Volume Poetry, Metamorphoses, The Nelligan Review, Silk Road Review, Southword, and The Los Angeles Review. New translations are forthcoming in journals including Gulf Coast.
I am honored to have been selected by the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) as one of its 2020 Virtual Travel Fellows, a distinction awarded annually to emerging literary translators.
In Fall 2023, I spoke about early-career opportunities and offered practical advice for aspiring and emerging literary translators at the annual conference of the Midwest Association of Translators & Interpreters. I also presented a session at the annual conference of the American Translators Association on strategies and resources for translators of historical texts and attended ALTA46, where I co-organized a roundtable for translators who work in language pairs with very divergent grammars and structures.
Looking ahead to February 2024, I am excited to attend the AWP conference for the first time, where I’ll be part of a panel and a reading featuring representations of “the other” in new translated literature from Frayed Edge Press.
Ongoing projects for which I am seeking publishers: a short story collection by contemporary French author Monique Debruxelles; French novelist Sophie Gay’s 1813 novel, LÉONIE DE MONTBREUSE; and Bolivian author Adela Zamudio’s 1913 novel, CONFIDENCES (Íntimas; excerpt available on the Jill! YouTube channel).
Contact literary translator Laura Nagle here.
Just as I expected: I LOVE it. You’ve found a way to make it flow and flow and flow. — author of a short story in my translation
The fictionalized tales, crisply told and alive with mystery in Nagle’s translation, fascinate, but the richer pleasure and meaning comes from what Nagle calls the “untangl[ing] [of] La Guzla’s threads of fact, fiction, and satire.” — Booklife review of Songs for the Gusle
Nagle renders the ache of ballads and folktales just as skillfully as she does the pointy-nosed parsimony of her alleged predecessor. Both help Songs for the Gusle sing. — the Broad Street Review on Songs for the Gusle