EDWARD GAUVIN

Around the turn of the year (2008-09), The Brooklyn Rail ran Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud’s story “The Only Mortal.” At the time, it was the author’s fifth published story in English, before the 2010 collection A Life on Paper. Now, as the Rail prepares to release its second anthology of fiction selected from its pages, Châteaureynaud’s story features in a table of contents where he’d be proud to be found: Ionesco, Ryunosuke, Pessoa, Cortazar, de Sade, Walser, Luc Lang, Emmanuel Bove… And I find myself among translators I’m honored to have shared column inches with: Alyson Waters, Geoffrey Brock, Susan Bernofsky, playwright Caridad Svich, Donald Nicholson-Smith, the late Richard Seaver… Not to mention original fiction by Bukowski, Douglas Glover, Laird Hunt, Shelley Jackson, and comics by Tom Motley. Assembled by Donald Breckenridge (with editorial assistance from Jen Zoble, Stefanie Sobelle, and Claudia Acevedo-Quiñones), this is nigh on 400 pages of awesomeness, and I salute them for producing not only a quality but a truly international volume. And all proceeds go toward sustaining the Rail as a progressive community, literary, and journalistic force.

Why wait till the May release? Digital review copies are yours for the asking right now. Just leave a comment!

H.V. Chao’s story “Visa” is out in the latest issue of The Nashwaak Review (28-29), with nifty cover art of a sculpture from the Whirligigs exhibit at Beaverbook Art Gallery. An earlier version originally tied for first place in USC’s own Edward G. Moses Undergraduate Fiction Prize, 1998. A later version won second place in the Society for the Study of the Short Story contest. It is, at long last, seeing the light of day in print. This is the second of Chao’s stories to appear this year.

At Design Week, Emily Gosling has a few appreciative words for Paris-based Jérémie Dres’ graphic novel debut We Won’t See Auschwitz (out now from SelfMadeHero):

The Holocaust isn’t the easiest subject to explore through a medium as image-led as the graphic novel. However, new Self Made Hero-published book We Won’t See Auschwitz proves that with a little sensitivity, a sweet and unpatronising plotline and some sensitively evocative illustration, it’s possible to produce a volume that explores such weighty issues rather well.

While the illustrations may not be overly complex or technical, the sketchy black and white tales manages to cover some weighty histories, proving that in some cases, pictures really are capable of speaking a thousand words.

Six years ago now (in 2007) I was one of the lucky young translators to get an ALTA Travel Fellowship. It was good money, huge encouragement at a precarious and impressionable time, and a great entrée into the world of literary translation by way of a conference that still manages to gather many of the country’s best literary translators each year for shoptalk, drinks, fascinating panels, and general comradery.

Applications are now being accepted for the 2013 ALTA Travel Fellowship Awards.  If you’re a newcomer to translation, no matter your age, you should try your hand! Each year, four to six fellowships in the amount of $1,000 are awarded to beginning (unpublished or minimally published) translators to help them pay for travel expenses to the annual ALTA conference.  (When I applied, I had two lit mag credits and a handful of comics to my name.) The 2013 conference will be held October 16–19 in Bloomington, Indiana, where UI has an impressive library with translators’ papers.

At the conference, ALTA Fellows will give readings of their translated work at a keynote event, thus providing them with an opportunity to present their translations to a large audience of other translators, as well as to publishers and authors from around the world.  ALTA Fellows will also have the opportunity to meet experienced translators and to find mentors.

If you would like to apply for a 2013 ALTA Travel Fellowship, please e-mail if possible a cover letter explaining your interest in attending the conference; your CV; and no more than ten double-spaced pages of translated text (prose or poetry) accompanied by the original text to maria.suarez@utdallas.edu.

If you have difficulties with e-mail, please mail the above documents to:

2013 ALTA Travel Fellowship Awards
c/o The University of Texas at Dallas

800 West Campbell Road.  JO51
Richardson, TX  75080-3021

Applications must be received by May 15, 2013 in order to be considered for this year’s fellowships.  Winners will be notified at the end of August. For more information, please visit ALTA’s website (www.literarytranslators.org) or contact Maria Rosa Suarez (maria.suarez@utdallas.edu, 972-883-2093).

Rachel Cooke gives Jérémie Drès’s We Won’t See Auschwitz a winning review in The Guardian:

Jérémie is wryly honest about this episode, just as he is about the fact that they concoct, for the benefit of the Zelechów archivist, a cock-and-bull story about how they’re searching for a friend’s relative rather than their own – and it’s this kind of honesty, I think, that makes We Won’t See Auschwitz so enjoyable. For all that they are terribly serious about their quest, there are times when they just can’t wait to get away from all the proselytising rabbis and obsessive genealogists and head to the nearest restaurant for gefilte fish and marinated herrings. We Won’t See Auschwitz is Dres’s first book, but it reminds me strongly of the brilliant travelogues of the French-Canadian cartoonist, Guy Delisle (Burma Chronicles, Jerusalem): a little bit of history; a little bit of politics; the occasional joke. Both men refuse to be weighed down by the complexity of a situation – and their comics cut through the silt of the opinions of thousands of others gracefully, and with seemingly astonishing ease.

As every comics fan out there knows, this coming weekend is the madness of the Angoulême International Comics Festival (now in its 40^th year!). I wish I were there, but barring that, I can at least plug a project I’ve recently become involved in.

Professor Cyclops is a brand new comics revue conceived expressly for the digital experience, with all manner of multimedia extras. The brainchild of a handful of France’s top young creators—Gwen de Bonneval, Hervé Tanquerelle, Brüno, Marc Lataste, Cyril Pedrosa, and Fabien Vehlmann—it’s meant to fill the periodical gap in quality, creator-driven comics, covering the spectrum from avant-garde to genre, RAW to 2000 A.D.

I’ve been translating some of the business documents for this exciting venture, and I do have to say: these boys think big! They’ve already partnered with Franco-German TV channel Arté, which guarantees high-profile funding, but what they’re really looking to do is make comics a regular choice in the entertainment spectrum. They’re very close to realizing their dream of a comics magazine for all ages and all readers being available in the virtual kiosk of major airlines, or an option among pay channels on hotel TVs.

Readers can catch a glimpse of what’s to come in the magazine, due to debut this March. On Friday, February 1, 2013, at 11:30am in the Salle Odéon du Théâtre d’Angoulême (Avenue des Maréchaux), all five founders will be on hand to tell you all about the one-eyed beast. Meanwhile, check them out on Facebook!