Decenter the Anglophone universe and come together for readings from three award-winning translators published by Two Lines Press, Dorothy, a publishing project, and Deep Vellum!
Enjoy a drink (on us if you register!) and chat with fellow lovers of daring literature while browsing the shelves at one of our all-time favorite bookstores.
Fatemeh Shams reads from her co-translations with Armen Davoudian of Mahbouba Ibrahimi's poetry from Hair on Fire: Afghan Women Poets published by Two Lines Press.
Lily Meyer reads from her translation of The Invisible Years by Rodrigo Hasbún, published by Deep Vellum.
Alex Niemi reads from her translation of The Endless Week by Laura Vazquez, published by Dorothy, a publishing project.
Andrea and Julián haven’t seen one another in twenty-one years—not since that tragic, fateful night their senior year of high school that marked their group of friends forever. A shocking phone call brings the two together again in Houston, where they begin to unravel the truth of that year, picking open long scabbed-over wounds from their upper-class adolescence in 1990s Bolivia and the scandal that ripped them apart.
A writer unhappy in his career and his marriage, Julián has been novelizing the past for his next book, trying to make meaning out of the events that changed the course of their lives forever. “I’d thought that writing about that time would free me, relieve the burden of the invisible years,” he writes, “but often it seems that it’s done the reverse.” Juxtaposing the naïve invincibility of adolescence with the grasping uncertainties of adulthood, The Invisible Years deftly weaves a coming-of-age tale that leaves the reader hanging on every word, even as they know how the cards fall in the end.
Lily Meyer is a translator, critic, and author of the novel Short War (Deep Vellum). A contributing writer at The Atlantic, her translations include Claudia Ulloa Donoso’s story collections Little Bird (Deep Vellum) and Ice for Martians (Columbia University Press). Her novel The End of Romance is forthcoming from Viking.