Celebrate translators and the craft of literary translation with readings of poetry, fiction and non-fiction in translation by:
Jacob Boas (Dutch)
Prabu Muruganantham (Tamil)
and
Allison A. deFreese (Spanish).
The reading will be followed by a short Q&A. Refreshments before and after.
Translators and Authors
Jacob (Jack) Boas was born in the Netherlands. He has a Ph.D. in Modern European History. His website can be found at www.jacobboas.com
Menno ter Braak – "my books are me" – was Holland's foremost interwar literary critic. "Temporary Illiteracy" (1934), the selection on tap, spoofs the reading habit and that "Monster of Civilization: Homo Lector". Ter Braak killed himself, aged 38, upon Germany's invasion of the Netherlands, May 1940.
Prabu Muruganantham is an immigrant writer, translator and filmmaker from the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
Devadevan is a contemporary Tamil poet. His poems express the profound joy of the human subconscious when it experiences unity with nature and the cosmos. Devadevan says, "If we come to understand that what is first expressed in poetry is our own personality, we will begin to take interest in the development of that personality. And the development of personality ultimately leads us to the state of realizing that it is nothing other than continuous self-realization.”
Janil Uc Tun (Ticul, Yucatán, Mexico) won the 2025 “Juegos Florales Hispanoamericanos Quetzaltenango” Award for Poetry (Guatemala), as well as the 2019 "Premio Peninsular de Poesía José Díaz Bolio" (José Díaz Bolio Peninsular Prize in Poetry). Janil’s book Gentry: Or the Name of a Tree with No Memory was awarded the prestigious 2022 “LXIII Juegos Florales Nacionales de Ciudad del Carmen” Award for Poetry. Uc Tun is a founding member of U Yotoch Yúuyum, a collective that promotes art and creativity while strengthening connections to Maya identity and serves as a lecturer in Literatura y Cultura Maya at the Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán.
Ileana Garma, born and raised in the Yucatan, holds a degree in Visual Arts from the Escuela Superior de Artes de Yucatán. She has been the recipient of a PECDA (Program to Encourage Artistic Creation and Development/ Programa de Estímulo a la Creación y Desarrollo Artístico) Painting Fellowship (2018-2019) as well as two FONCA (National Endowment for Culture and Arts/Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes) fellowships in Poetry (2013-2014 and 2020-2021). Garma has also received the Premio National in Poetry for her book Caza de letras/The Letter Hunt (UNAM, 2012), the National Charles Bukowski Poetry Prize (2008), and was awarded the 2022 Agustín Yáñez National Short Story Prize for her book Cómo vivir sola después de los cuarenta/How to Live Alone After Forty (Libros del Marqués, 2023).
Allison deFreese is president of the Oregon Society of Translators and Interpreters (OSTI) and a former National Endowment for the Arts Literature Translation fellow. Her book-length translations, into English, include works by María Negroni, Karla Marrufo, David Anuar, Carolina Esses, and astronaut José Moreno Hernández. Her translations also appear in the Harvard Review, the New England Review, Latin American Literature Today, Michigan Quarterly Review, and The Los Angeles Review. She teaches in the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley's MA in Spanish Translation and Interpreting (TIP) Program.
Where: Mother Foucault's Bookshop, 715 SE Grand Ave, Portland, OR 97214
(503) 236-2665
When: Tuesday, February 24th @ 7:00 p.m.
We hope to see you there!