Poetry Translation Workshop with Wendy Call

The Northwest Literary Translators are excited to welcome award-winning local translator Wendy Call to lead a workshop just for poetry translation. 

Participation is limited to six translators of poetry from any language into English, who will be asked to provide materials in advance. Others are welcome to register to observe and follow the discussion. 

If you'd like to workshop your translation, please follow these steps:

1) Register here as a participant

2) Email the following by the morning of March 7, 2024 to Shelley:

• No more than 20 lines of poetry, in your English translation
• The corresponding lines in the original language
• Brief information for context (the background of the poem and the poet, etc.)
• Your questions or challenges you're facing in the translation

Time & Location

March 14, 5:30 PM – 7:30 PM

Folio: The Seattle Athenaeum, 93 Pike St #307, Seattle, WA 98101, USA

workshop leader

Wendy Call (she/her) is co-editor of Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writers’ Guide (Penguin, 2007) and the new annual Best Literary Translations (Deep Vellum, 2024), as well as author of the award-winning nonfiction book No Word for Welcome (Nebraska, 2011). She is translator of two collections of poetry by Mexican-Zapotec poet Irma Pineda: In the Belly of Night and Other Poems (Pluralia/Eulalia, 2022) and Nostalgia Doesn’t Flow Away Like Riverwater (Deep Vellum, 2024). Together with Irma Pineda, she won the 2022 John Frederick Nims Prize in Translation from the Poetry Foundation. She co-translated Mexican-Zoque poet Mikeas Sánchez’s How to Be a Good Savage (Milkweed, 2024), called “a testament to the power of language as a living, breathing entity” by Asymptote and “a significant work in more ways than one” by the New York Times. Wendy’s translation projects have been supported by fellowships from Cornell University’s Global South Translation Fund, the Fulbright Commission, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She has been Translator in Residence at Antioch University and the University of Iowa. Wendy is part of the creative nonfiction faculty of the Rainier Writing Workshop MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University. She lives in Southeast Seattle, on Duwamish land, and in Oaxaca, Mexico, on Mixtec and Zapotec land. (Photo credit: Axel Rivera)

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