Interviews Barbara Epler started working at New Directions after graduating from college in 1984, and she has been its president and publisher since 2011. In 2015 Poets & Writers awarded Epler their Editor’s Prize, and in 2016 Words Without Borders gave her the Ottaway Award for the Promotion of International Literature. Veronica Esposito: You became editor-in-chief with New Directions almost twenty-five years ago, in 1996. What are some of the biggest changes in the translation world since then? Barbara Epler: Without yet being a large enough share of what’s published in America overall, there has been a great growth in the amount and quality of translations appearing here. To my mind, that’s due mostly to two factors: a miraculous growth in new companies here (mostly small and agile) largely or entirely devoted to translated literature, as well as a sort of general cultural nausea about how parochial the USA tends to be. Back in the mid-1990s, great groundbreaking presses interested in translation were fairly thin on the ground. We did not yet have Archipelago, And Other Stories, Deep Vellum, Fence, Dorothy Project, New Vessel, Restless, Nightboat, New York Review of Books Classics, Open Letter, Other Press, Two Lines, Tilted Axis, Ugly Duckling, Wakefield, Wave, and more (apologies to houses I am forgetting!). Back in 1996, all these marvelous publishers were still a gleam in their founders’ eyes. Of course, back then... Continue reading at 'World Literature Today'
[ World Literature Today | 2021-01-11 14:39:22 UTC ]