Celebrating Multilingualism on the Page and in the Classroom

Are you a literary translator interested in multilingual writing? Or a secondary school English teacher with multilingual students in your classes? Join us for an afternoon of parallel workshops exploring how hybrid identities express themselves creatively on the page and in the classroom, and how you can harness that creativity in your work. The workshops are followed by a bilingual reading and Q&A with author Susana Chávez-Silverman.

2.00–3.30pm: WORKSHOP A: Translating Multilingually: Ethics and Practice
This workshop, led by Ellen Jones, will allow literary translators to explore new avenues for their creative practice. It will encourage them to be ambitious in their choice of material, and to think critically about the ethical and political ramifications of translation in multilingual contexts. It will also provide a range of possible practical solutions to translational difficulties arising from multilingual texts.

2.00–3.30pm: WORKSHOP B: Supporting Young Multilingual Writers: a hands-on workshop for secondary school teachers
This workshop, led by Karina Lickorish Quinn and Rahul Bery, will explore ways to bring multilingualism into the secondary English classroom as a resource that can enrich all students’ interaction with the learning of reading and writing. The session will furnish educators with practical, versatile activities and resources to use to encourage multilingual students to make creative use of their language skills and to get young people thinking about the importance of language.

3.30pm: Coffee break

4.00-5.00pm: Susana Chávez-Silverman: A Bilingual Reading and Q&A
Susana will read from her collections of bilingual crónicas including her forthcoming book Heartthrob: del Balboa Café al Apartheid and Back (University of Wisconsin Press).

5.00pm: drinks reception

Susana Chávez-Silverman (pictured right) is a US Latina writer and Professor of Romance Languages and Literature at Pomona College in Claremont, California. She is the author of two bilingual memoirs, Killer Crónicas: Bilingual Memories (2004) and Scenes from la Cuenca de Los Angeles y otros Natural Disasters (2010). As a scholar of Latin American and US Latinx literature, she co-edited Tropicalizations: Transcultural Representations of Latinidad (1997) and Reading and Writing the Ambiente: Queer Sexualities in Latino, Latin American and Spanish Culture (2000). She has published on Argentine poet Alejandra Pizarnik, as well as on other Latin American and US Latinx authors.

Ellen Jones is a researcher and translator. She holds a PhD from Queen Mary University of London and is an OWRI Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Modern Languages Research, School of Advanced Study, University of London. Her main research interests are multilingualism and translation in contemporary Latinx and Latin American literature. Ellen has translated a number of multilingual texts, including Susana Chávez-Silverman’s ‘All Green Will Endure Chrónicle’ for Asymptote. Her translation of Rodrigo Fuentes’s Trout, Belly Up is published by Charco Press.

Karina Lickorish Quinn is a Peruvian-English writer, an English teacher at Townley Grammar School, and a Teaching Associate in Creative Writing at Queen Mary University of London. She was previously a lecturer in English and Creative Writing at the University of Reading. Her work has been published by The White Review, The Offing, and Asymptote, and she is currently working on her debut novel, represented by Emma Paterson at Aitken Alexander. Karina has a particular interest in multilingual literature and in diversifying the school curriculum, especially in the English classroom.

Rahul Bery is a translator from Spanish and Portuguese into English, as well as a qualified secondary teacher with experience teaching Modern Foreign Languages and English as an Additional Language in primary and secondary schools in London, Bristol and South Wales, where he is currently based. His translations of authors such as Álvaro Enrigue, Guadalupe Nettel and Daniel Galera have appeared in publications including Granta and The White Review. He is currently the British Library’s translator in residence.

ATTENDANCE FREE BUT PLACES ARE LIMITED. PLEASE BOOK VIA THE LINKS BELOW:

Click here for Workshop A: Translating Multilingually: Ethics and Practice

Click here for Workshop B: Supporting Young Multilingual Writers

Click here to attend the Susana Chávez-Silverman reading and Q&A only

This event is supported by the Institute of Modern Languages Research, Queen Mary University of London via OWRI Cross-Language Dynamics: Reshaping Community, and by OWRI Language Acts and Worldmaking.