Meet the Translator: Allison A. DeFreese

NOTIS's Northwest Literary Translators and Folio: The Seattle Athenaeum have teamed up to organize a series of lectures by local literary translators about their published books. Tonight's speaker is Oregon translator Allison A. DeFreese, discussing her translation of a poetry collection by Verónica González Arredondo, I Am Not That Body. All are welcome! NOTIS members: register using the Folio Member option for discounted admission.

EVENT DETAILS

Translators of international literature serve to dissolve stereotypes and open our eyes to the common humanity between people of varying nationalities, cultures and backgrounds. Join us in celebrating the gift translators have to offer, and expand your view of universal literature with a series of monthly presentations featuring local translators and their books.

In the third event the series, translator Allison A. DeFreese presents I Am Not That Body. Translated from Spanish. To purchase a copy of the book online click here.

Dedicated to the poet’s mother,  I Am Not That Body contains both fragmented free verse and prose poems. The book invites the reader to follow a mother and young daughter on their journey across thorny deserts that were once covered by ocean beds, but are now parched and perilous; to ride atop the “Death Train” from the Guatemalan border toward the U.S. (“don’t sleep,/they told me,/but no one ever said:/don’t dream”); to bear witnesses to executions (while remaining silent), or to be delivered to and resurrected from a subterranean world of mass graves.