The Festival Neue Literatur partners present "Whose/Story Is History: Shifting the Perspective," which will feature readings by and a conversation among authors Katja Brunner, Maaza Mengiste, Sharon Dodua Otoo and Doron Rabinovici, and will be moderated by Tess Lewis, who curated this year's festival.
What do we hear when unheeded voices are given their say? How are public narratives subverted by the powerful, or even the powerless? Can stories of individuals long dead help break cycles of injustice?  In this conversation, a Festival Neue Literatur (FNL) event, acclaimed German- and English-language authors Maaza Mengiste,  Doron Rabinovici, Katja Brunner, and Sharon Dodua Otoowill read from their recent work and discuss how they use literature to disrupt conventional notions of history and historical timelines. Their works animate the stories of the Ethiopian women who fought against the Italian invasion of their country in 1935, a photographer who loses control of his images, women who have been branded as witches or hysterics and silenced through violence and abuse, and the interrelation of women’s lives across generations and continents. The conversation will be moderated by award-winning literary translator and writer and festival curator Tess Lewis.

More information HERE

An evening of conversation about the art of translation with local translators Allison Markin Powell and Tess Lewis, plus book-signing. Allison translates text from Japanese and Tess translates from French and German. This will be a very special evening! Books will be available to purchase and signed by the translators.

More information here

What does it mean to be a hero in the 20th century? Epic Annette: A Heroine’s Tale recounts the extraordinary true story of Annette Beaumanoir, whose involvement with the French Resistance and the Algerian FLN cemented her name in history.

The Goethe-Institut and the Embassy of France in Ireland will present a conversation with German-French novelist Anne Weber, who turned the epic verse form to tell Beaumanoir’s gripping personal tale, and translator Tess Lewis at MoLi – Museum of Literature Ireland.

This event is supported by Dublin UNESCO City of Literature & Dublin City Council.

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Join us for the first US screening of Pushan Kripalani’s documentary about the legendary publisher Seagull Books, a pre-eminent publisher of translated literature in the world and a major champion of German-language writers in all genres.
Of the Book and Other Stories 120 mins | Color | English and Hindi

In this visual memoir celebrating the fortieth anniversary of Seagull Books, authors, booksellers, and artists in India and abroad reflect on their role in this theatre of publishing, where hesitant and unconventional ideas find their place on the page. It features interviews with the Seagull team, especially Naveen Kishore, who shares fragments of his extraordinary journey from theatre-lighting designer to publisher, as well as Gayatri Spivak, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Peter Maravelis of City Lights Booksellers, Jeff Deutsch, the director of Seminary Co-op Bookstores, and Rick Simonson, veteran bookseller and literary impresario at Elliott Bay Books in Seattle.

Of the Book and Other Stories explores how Seagull Books remains proudly at home in Calcutta but is truly a publisher for and of the world.

The screening will be followed by a conversation about Seagull Books’ place in the international literary landscape with the publisher, writer, theater practitioner and photographer Naveen Kishore, Colin Robinson, the co-founder of the alternative publisher Or Books, bookseller Rick Simonson, and translator and editor Tess Lewis.

Register HERE

Ein TOLEDO-Abend zum Roman »Nevermore« / In celebration of the novel ‘Nevermore’ by Cécile Wajsbrot
Tess Lewis, Cécile Wajsbrot und Anne Weber
Moderation: Marie Luise Knott

In Cécile Wajsbrots Roman »Nevermore« (Wallstein, 2021) begibt sich eine französische Übersetzerin auf der Flucht vor der Vergangenheit nach Dresden, um Virginia Woolfs Roman »To the Lighthouse« (1927) zu übersetzen. Auf Französisch entfaltet die Autorin in ihrem Grenzgang Virginia Woolfs Sprach- und Bildwelten. Anne Weber überträgt »Nevermore« in eine neue Bilingualität – Gespensterorte und Gespensterworte: ein „Roman noir der Übersetzungskunst“, so die Jury des Preises der Leipziger Buchmesse, die Anne Weber für ihre Übertragung ins Deutsche im Jahr 2021 auszeichnete.

Die Übersetzerin Tess Lewis übernimmt ihrerseits die Aufgabe, »Nevermore« in Virginia Woolfs Ausgangssprache zu übertragen. Welchen Herausforderungen stehen wir heute gegenüber, wenn es darum geht, versehrte Welten ins Bild zu setzen? Welche Möglichkeiten tun sich auf, wenn es darum geht, bilinguale Werke in fremde Bilingualitäten zu überführen? Und: Welches Spiel spielt die Sprache dabei?

In Zusammenarbeit mit TOLEDO – Übersetzer·innen im Austausch der Kulturen.

More information HERE

The Leo Baeck Institute and Deutsches Haus at NYU present a reading and conversation on I Just Let Life Rain Down on Me, Selected Letters and Reflections of Rahel Levin Varnhagen (Seagull Books, 2024) with the book’s editor and translator Peter Wortsman and the author and translator Tess Lewis. “I Just Let Life Rain Down on Me” affords English-speaking readers the first privileged peek at the mindset of one of Europe’s first and foremost women of letters. Rahel Levin Varnhagen penned over ten thousand letters to more than three hundred recipients during her liftetime, varying in subject from family affairs to linguistic, literary and pressing social concerns; and constituting a singular contribution to German literature.

More information about the book here

Register for in-person attendance here

The ACFNY and Deutsches Haus at NYU present a reading by the authors from their fiction Kochen im falschen Jahrhundert and Ghost Pains, followed by a moderated conversation with the translator and author Tess Lewis. Präauer and Stevens are keen observers of social niceties and not-so-niceties. By delving into the said and the unsaid, the complexities of taste and mores, they paint vivid, psychologically precise portraits of relationships and dinner parties teetering on the brink of disaster. De gustibus, we’re told, non est disputandem, but their witty, kaleidoscopic writing shows that taste is a very contentious topic, indeed.  

More information about the books and authors here

Please register to attend in person here

The Festival Neue Literatur partners present the 2023 Friedrich Ulfers Prize Ceremony and the FNL satellite event, What a Way to Make a Livin': Writing about Work. This year’s Friedrich Ulfers Prize will be awarded to the literary translator and writer Tess Lewis. The event, "What a Way to Make a Livin': Writing about Work,” will feature readings by and a conversation among authors Dorothee Elmiger, Andrea Grill, Anja Kampmann, and Christine Smallwood, and will be moderated by Tess Lewis.

More information here

Register here

Portland Literary Arts presents an online reading and conversation with the 2023 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation Winner and Finalists featuring poets from Chile, Haiti, Iran, the Slovenian-Austrian border, and Bolivia read by their U.S. translators, followed by Q&A.

The Loose Pearl, Paula Ilabaca Nuñez (Coimpress), translated from Spanish by Daniel Borzutzky
No Way in the Skin Without This Bloody Embrace, Jean D’Amérique (Ugly Duckling Presse), translated from French by Conor Bracken
Let Us Believe in the Beginning of the Cold Season: Selected Poems, Forough Farrokhzad (New Directions Publishing), translated from Persian by Elizabeth T. Gray, Jr.
distant transit, Maja Haderlap (Archipelago Books), translated from German by Tess Lewis
Adela Zamudio: Selected Poetry & Prose, Adela Zamudio (Fuente Fountain Books), translated from Spanish by Lynette Yetter

More information here At 4 pm PDT, 1 pm EST
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In Cecile Wajsbrot’s Nevermore, a translator haunted by her past moves to a town with its own dark history in order to begin a translation of Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse. Working on Woolf’s chapter “Time Passes,” she undertakes her own meditation upon the passage of time and the movement of history. Confronting the violent scars of World War II in Woolf’s writing and in Dresden, her new home, our narrator experiences a fusion of the space of the novel with the space around her. As a translator, she is trained to navigate different worlds. Yet with this project, she risks losing herself entirely in this new realm where time, space, and language–much like waves at sea–overlap. Wajsbrot will speak with translators Anne Weber and Tess Lewis about the task of the translator, finding the language to recreate destroyed epochs, and the fragile boundaries between literature and life. 

More information and registration HERE

We are thrilled to welcome the acclaimed Austrian writer Maja Haderlap and renowned translator Tess Lewis for a bilingual poetry reading at the ACF London, presenting the poetry collection distant transit. They will read and discuss selected poems in German and English, followed by a Q&A.

Maja Haderlap's work langer transit continues to explore themes of her novel Angel of Oblivion: shifting topographies and inner topographies, Slovenian history and myths, anti-fascist resistance, language and identity. 
langer transit is a poetry of transitions, charting the move from one country or language to another, from adolescence to adulthood, from trust and intimacy to distance, from rootedness to estrangement, but also from estrangement to a sense of community and home.

This reading is part of the symposium Reading Bachmann Now.
More information and registration HERE

Join author Anne Weber for a reading from her novel in verse, Epic Annette: A Heroine's Tale, followed by a conversation with her translator, Tess Lewis

What does it mean to be a hero in the 20th century? Anne Weber's novel, winner of the 2020 German Book Prize, recounts the extraordinary true story of Annette Beaumanoir, whose involvement with the French Resistance and the Algerian FLN cemented her name in history.

Beaumanoir’s gripping story, including her exile from France and separation from her children, embodies the tragic conflict between political activism and familial obligation. This novel about courage, resilience, and the struggle for freedom is also a bold and nuanced look at the ethics of heroism.

For more information click here

The Center for Fiction Café & Bar Presents Poetry/in Translation

Join us Friday evening at The Center for Fiction Café & Bar as award-winning poets and translators come together to read poetry, in and out of translation, for a night that celebrates the poem’s power to bring the living and the dead, the near and the far, into close and convivial communion. Featuring Conor Bracken, Tess Lewis, David Tomas Martinez, Yerra Sugarman, and Lynette Yetter.

More information HERE

Deutsches Haus at NYU presents a conversation with the author Regina Dürig, currently writer-in-residence at Deutsches Haus at NYU, and the writer and translator Tess Lewis. Their conversation will focus on Regina Dürig’s creative practice; her wide-ranging writing (including experimental prose, theater and radio plays, and children’s and YA books); and how her role as a lecturer in creative writing influences her writing career and vice versa.

Find more information and register here

Andrea Grills »Cherubino« auf Kroatisch, Englisch und Deutsch

In »Cherubino« (Zsolnay Verlag) wird die universale Sprache der Musik auf Deutsch erzählt – aber wie klingt das auf Englisch und Kroatisch?
Andrea Grill im Gespräch mit ihren Übersetzerinnen Tess Lewis und Milka Car

Moderation: Nadja Grössing

Eine Kooperation mit der IG Übersetzerinnen Übersetzer im Rahmen von TRADUKI

The Art of Betrayal: Translation in an Age of Suspicion

Can translation, as an act of responsiveness and responsibility, create common ground when relations between and within societies are increasingly fraught? By resisting the pressure to smooth out differences between cultures and by complicating our ideas of the universal, translation paradoxically makes the foreign more accessible. What, for instance, does it mean to be faithful when navigating charged language or conflicting social mores? How can nuance be preserved in a new context? How does the translator skirt the perils and pitfalls of specificity or even use them to advantage?
In this talk, Tess Lewis, a translator of French and German, will discuss the contested idea of fidelity to the original text through examples from her translations of works by Walter Benjamin, Ernst Jünger, Lukas Bärfuß, Maja Haderlap, Ludwig Hohl, and Anne Weber among others.

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The ACF London is thrilled to welcome highly acclaimed author Andrea Grill and the renowned translator Tess Lewis, presenting Grill’s latest novel Cherubino. Join us for this bilingual reading and book discussion, hosted by Andrea Capovilla (Ingeborg Bachmann Centre), offering you a fascinating insight into the novel as well as their creative processes.

The event is organised in cooperation with the Ingeborg Bachmann Centre for Austrian Literature & Culture at the Institute of Modern Languages Research.

Cherubino, nominated for the 2019 German Book Prize, explores Mozart’s "Le nozze di Figaro" and Nicholas Maw’s opera "Sophie’s Choice". Cherubino charts the pregnancy, relationships and career trajectory of the 39-year-old mezzo soprano Iris Schiffer. Whilst pregnant, she makes her debut as Cherubino in Mozart’s "Le nozze di Figaro "and later rehearses the main part in Nicholas Maw’s opera "Sophie’s Choice". The experience of pregnancy and the dialogue with the unborn child is intertwined with her exploration of her operatic roles and the problems of combining work and parenthood.

Andrea Grill was born in Bad Ischl in 1975, and is a biologist, poet, novelist and translator from Albanian, Italian and Dutch. She also studied evolutionary biology and incorporated her research into texts such as Schmetterlinge. Ein Portrait and her 2015 novel Das Paradies des Doktor Caspari. Grill’s most recent award is the 2021 Anton Wildgans Prize. She lives in Vienna.

This reading will be held live at the Austrian Cultural Forum, 28 Rutland Gate, London SW7 1PQ. Attendance is free, however advance online booking is required.

Heimito von Doderer's The Strudlhof Steps is an experimental tour de force with the suspense and surprise of a soap opera. Set in the last days of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire—and the first days after it—this vast novel has a wide range of characters, but its true protagonist is Vienna.

This is the first translation into English of The Strudlhof Steps. Learn more about a major 20th-century writer and his magnus opus at this online conversation between the translator Vincent Kling, Tess Lewis, and Daniel Kehlmann. Click here to RSVP.

Rachel Cohen joins the author Silvia Boadella and translator Tess Lewis for an online a conversation about Boadella’s new book A Life Through Art, which tells the story of Sophie Taeuber-Arp (1889-1943), a pioneer of modern art whose joyous and multi-faceted art spanned two world wars and became the center of Zurich’s Dada movement. Largely considered the most important Swiss artist of the early 20th century, Sophie Taeuber-Arp is exhibited in museums around the world. An eponymous exhibition will be open to the public at MoMA 3 days after this talk, on November 21, 2021.

RSVP here.