A Celebration of Action Books, Letras Latinas, and Notre Dame Review ft. Katherine M. Hedeen, Víctor Rodríguez Núñez, ML Martin, and Aleida Rodríguez

The Translation Roundtable will focus on the dynamic potentialities of translation. While translation discussions often focus on the failures or problems of translation, this roundtable will focus on what translation makes happen. Translation may not just transform the original, it may transform the translator and, potentially, the target culture. Translation makes imitations, versions and copies. What may rise out of this excess?

Katherine M. Hedeen is a prize-winning translator of poetry and an essayist. A specialist in Latin American poetry, she has translated over thirty books of some of the most respected voices from the region into English. Her work has been a finalist for both the Best Translated Book Award and the National Translation Award. She is a recipient of the University of Wisconsin’s inaugural Poetry in Translation Prize, two NEA Translation Grants, and a PEN Translates award in the UK. She is an editor of the transnational and translational press, Action Books. She resides in Ohio, where she is Professor of Spanish at Kenyon College, and Havana, Cuba. www.katherinemhedeen.com

Víctor Rodríguez Núñez (Havana, 1955) is one of Cuba’s most outstanding and celebrated contemporary writers, with over one hundred collections of poetry published throughout the world. He has been the recipient of major awards in the Spanish-speaking region. His selected poems have been translated into a dozen languages and he has read his poetry in more than fifty countries. He divides his time between Gambier, Ohio, where he is Professor Emeritus of Spanish at Kenyon College, and Havana, Cuba. www.victorrodrigueznunez.com

M.L. Martin is the author of W & E: a refracted translation of Wulf and Eadwacer (Action Books, 2025). They are an interdisciplinary poet, translator, editor for Asymptote, the premier site of world literature in translation, and founder of the Translation Now! Symposium. Their language-based installation, Journey to Shoshone Falls, was shown at The Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma from October 2019—March 2020. Their poetry and translations have appeared in Black Warrior Review, The Capilano Review, The Fiddlehead, The Kenyon Review, Oxford American, Poetry, and elsewhere. They live in Canada.

Aleida Rodríguez was born in Cuba. In 1962 was airlifted parentless to the U.S. via Operation Pedro Pan. In 1967 she arrived in Los Angeles, where she became the first woman/Latina/lesbian to establish a literary magazine and press (rara avis, Books of a Feather 1977­–84) in city history. Her poetry and prose have appeared nationwide in literary magazines, textbooks, and anthologies since 1974, as well as in England, Wales, and The Netherlands. Her first poetry collection, Garden of Exile, won both the Morton Poetry Prize from Sarabande Books and the PEN Literary Award, before being selected Best Book by San Francisco Chronicle.