Translating South Asia: An evening in Chicago

Event Date: Tuesday, October 29 · 6 - 8pm CDT

Join International Booker Prize winning translator Daisy Rockwell, JCB Prize winning Malayalam translator Jayasree Kalathil, and others read from their translations from Bangla, Hindi, Malayalam, Panjabi, Sinhala, Tamil, and more.

South Asian Literature in Translation (SALT) and the South Asia Institute (SAI) are thrilled to host this first-of-its-kind event in Chicago to celebrate the literary richness of South Asia.

October 29, 2024, 6 to 8 pm, including light bites
SAI, 1925 S Michigan Ave, Chicago 60616
Admission ($5) will be waived for students

Presenters (list in formation)

Ammara Ahmad (Panjabi) is a writer and journalist from Lahore, Pakistan. Her work has appeared in Dawn, The Wire, Scroll, Quint, Indian Express and Malaysiakini. She is a language activist and has been actively promoting Punjabi, which is a dying language in Pakistan.

Khairani Barokka (Indonesian) is former Editor of Modern Poetry in Translation (MPT), and a writer and artist from Jakarta, with around twenty-five years of professional translation experience. Okka’s work has been presented widely internationally, and centers disability justice as anticolonial praxis, and access as translation. Among her honors, she has been MPT’s Inaugural Poet-in-Residence, a UNFPA Indonesian Young Leader Driving Social Change, an Artforum Must-See, and Associate Artist at the UK’s National Centre for Writing. Okka’s books include Indigenous Species, Rope, and Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back (as co-editor). Her latest is Ultimatum Orangutan, shortlisted for the Barbellion Prize.

Subhashree Beeman (Tamil) is a US-based literary and commercial translator working in the languages Tamil, French, Spanish, and English. She was born and raised in Chennai, India. Through the ALTA Emerging Translator Mentorship, she will be translating her first book-length work from Tamil under the guidance of Mr. Kalyan Raman.

Shrutakirti Dutta (Bangla) is a third year PhD student at the department of English at UChicago. Her research interests include gendered labour and care practices, and domestic material culture within nineteenth century British empire. She received her MPhil in English from Jadavpur University, Kolkata where she worked on women’s travel writing and nation-making in nineteenth century Bengal. She is co-editor of the graphic anthology Famine Tales from Britain and Bengal, published from Jadavpur University Press in 2022.

Dr Jayasree Kalathil is a bilingual writer and award-winning translator of Malayalam literature. She is the author of the children’s book The Sackclothman, which has been translated into Malayalam, Telugu and Hindi. Her translations havebeen awarded the Crossword Book Award for Indian Language Translation (Diary of a Malayali Madman by N. Prabhakaran, 2019); the JCB Prize for Literature (with S. Hareesh for Moustache, 2020); the V. Abdulla Memorial Translation Award; and a Jury’s Commendation for the Muse India-GSP Rao Translation Award (Valli by Sheela Tomy, 2023). Valli was also shortlisted for the 2023 National Translation Award from the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA). Her latest translation, Maria, Just Maria by Sandhya Mary, marks her third appearance on the longlist for the 2024 JCB Prize for Literature. As part of the global effort to #readpalestine, Jayasree has translated into Malayalam Palestinian poetry by Mahmoud Darwish, Refaat Alareer, Hiba Abu Nada, Samih al-Qasim, and Mosab Abu Toha. Originally from Malappuram district in Kerala, India, Jayasree lives in the New Forest in Hampshire, UK.

Alexander McKinley (Sinhala) (BA, Grinnell College; MTS, Harvard Divinity School; PhD, Duke University) studies the religious traditions of Sri Lanka and has been translating Sinhala and Tamil poetry for over a decade. He teaches at Lake Forest College and Loyola University. His book is Mountain at a Center of the World: Pilgrimage and Pluralism in Sri Lanka (Columbia University Press, 2024).

Daisy Rockwell (Hindi and Urdu) is an artist and translator living in Vermont, USA. She has translated numerous twentieth century classics into English from Hindi and Urdu, including Bhisham Sahni’s Tamas, and Khadija Mastur’s The Women’s Courtyard. Her translation of Krishna Sobti’s A Gujarat Here, a Gujarat There was awarded the 2019 Aldo and Jeannie Scaglioni for Translation of a Literary Work, and her translation of Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand was awarded the 2022 International Booker Prize as well as the 2022 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation.

Ananthu Sunil (Malayalam) is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in English, while working as a freelance translator on the side. Ananthu is also a rapper and songwriter, working hard to garner attention for his songs, which blend English and Malayalam lyrics.

Thila Varghese (Tamil) lives in Canada, where she works part time during the academic year as a Senior Writing Advisor at Western University. Her translations of Tamil literary works have been published in international journals and magazines. Thila’s translation entry was shortlisted in the 2023 Armory Square Prize for South Asian Literature in Translation.

Aditya Vikram (Hindi) is a writer, translator, and emerging scholar from Lucknow, India. Currently a teaching fellow in the English department at Ashoka University, they are interested in questions of language, regionality, postcolonialism, performance, and gender. Their critical and creative literary work has been published by Goethe Institute, British Council, Agents of Ishq, and Gulmohur Quarterly, among others. Their translation of Mridula Garg’s Sister, My Sister was shortlisted for the 2024 Armory Square Prize for South Asian Literature in Translation.

Quamrul Hassan (Bangla) is an MFA Candidate at the University of Arkansas’s Program in Creative Writing and Translation. His poems and translations have been published or forthcoming in The Los Angeles Review, Usawa Literary Review, Star Literature Review and Prachya Review. A finalist in this year’s Travel Fellows Awards of the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA), Quamrul is now heavily invested in translating contemporary Bangladeshi poetry and short stories besides working on his debut novel.

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