Please join us for an evening of readings in translation at Berl’s, featuring harlequin creature issue 9 contributors Elisa Wouk Almino, Ellen Elias-Bursac, and María José Gimenez, and editors Meghan Forbes and Anne Posten.
harlequin creature is a hand-made arts & literary journal, based in New York and Ann Arbor. 2016 makes five years of hc, and to mark this anniversary, we’ve launched a special double issue 8/9. It was curated by a group of guest editors from across the country, who have brought together an exciting list of contributors. Issue 9, “sitting between chairs,” which we celebrate at Berl’s, includes poetry by Denés Krusovszky, Ana Martins Marques, Kepa Murua, Alejandro Saravia, Iryna Starovoit, prose by David Albahari and Jennifer Croft, and translations by Penny Alexander, Genevieve Arlie, Elise Wouk Almino, Ellen Elias-Bursac, María José Giménez, Sandra Kingery, Grace Mahoney, Saein Park, Agnieszka Pokojska, Eliana Vagalau and featured art by Melanie Teresa Bohrer
Elisa Wouk Almino is a writer and translator from Portuguese. She was recently granted a fellowship from Writers Omi at Ledig House to translate a book-length collection of Paulo Leminski's poetry and is currently putting together an illustrated, translated collection of Ana Martins Marques's poetry. Her writing and translations have appeared in Guernica magazine, Stonecutter, n+1, Ugly Duckling Presse’s 6x6 Journal, Asymptote Journal, and Words Without Borders, where she was formerly the book reviews editor. She is currently the associate editor at Hyperallergic.
Ellen Elias-Bursac translates fiction and non-fiction from Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian. Her translation of David Albahari's novel Götz and Meyer was given the Alta National Translation Award in 2006.
Meghan Forbes is the founder and co-editor of harlequin creature, to which she has also regularly contributed. Her essays, translations, and reviews have appeared elsewhere in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Michigan Quarterly Review, When in Drought, post at MoMA, molossus and Words Without Borders. She recently edited a special feature on Central European visual poetry in translation for WWB. Meghan “super-commutes” between New York, where she is a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Public Knowledge at NYU, and Austin, where she teaches college kids Czech and Central European literature and visual culture at the University of Texas.
María José Giménez is a translator, editor and rough-weather poet with a rock climbing problem. Recipient of a 2016 Gabo Prize for Translation and fellowships from the NEA, The Banff International Literary Translation Centre, and the Katharine Bakeless Nason Endowment, Giménez is co-director of Montreal’s collective The Apostles Review and Assistant Translation Editor for Drunken Boat.
Anne Posten translates (mostly) contemporary German literature, teaches Queens College undergraduates not to use the word "relatable", and sings Renaissance music. She struck the word "home" from her list of mental concepts around the time she decided New York City was good enough.