A quick rundown of my current translation work:

Forthcoming! Over the past year I’ve been working on a translation of Georges Didi-Huberman‘s Survivance des lucioles, and it is done! At least, my part of the work (translating, revising, going through copy edits, and proofreading) is done. Here’s part of the description of the book:

Through his readings of Dante, Pasolini, Walter Benjamin, and others, Georges Didi-Huberman seeks again to understand this strange, minor light, the signals of small beings in search of love […] Their flickering presence serves as a counterforce to the blinding sovereign power that Giorgio Agamben calls The Kingdom and the Glory, that artificial brilliance that once surrounded dictators and today emanates from every screen. In this timely reflection, much needed in our time of excessive light, Didi-Huberman’s Survival of the Fireflies offers a humble yet powerful image of individual hope and desire: the firefly-image.

The result, Survival of the Fireflies, will be available in September. You could even pre-order it on Amazon if you want.

Also in September, also Didi-Huberman: “Light Against Light,” my translation of “Lumière contre lumière,” will appear in Alienocene, the online “Journal of the First Outernational,” edited by Frédéric Neyrat. This essay builds on the discussion of light in Survival of the Fireflies in consideration of an art exhibit (titled “La Disparition des lucioles”) at the Prison Sainte-Anne in Avignon.

Upcoming! I have just signed a contract with the University of Minnesota Press to translate Antoine Volodine’s novella, Alto Solo, which might, tentatively, be called Solo Viola in English. If you’re not familiar with Volodine, he’s a fascinating writer who uses several pseudonyms (Volodine is one of them) and works in a somewhat speculative genre he has called “post-exoticism.” Here’s an interview to serve as an introduction and his Goodreads page, which lists both works in French and translated into English.

More! Through some fun internet connections, I had the good fortune to translate a poem by Maxime Coton, winner of the 2018 Robert Goffin prize. Paula Kehoe reads the poem “Along the Night’s Way” (translation of “Du côté de la nuit”) in the video below.

ALONG THE NIGHT’S WAY – Maxime Coton – poem from Bruits asbl on Vimeo.

Some future poetic collaborations are in the works, I’m pleased to say.

Non-verbal projects:

It’s summer, so obviously (or at least if you ever see my Instagram it’s obvious) I’m gardening. Here’s what I work on when I run out of words:

The front flower garden! Blooming: coral bells, columbine, gas plant, bee balm, peony.

Roots & Leaves garden: potatoes, radishes, beets, cabbage, lettuces, herbs.

Spring-to-Summer Garden: peas, lettuces, radishes, which will make room for the tomatoes and peppers as they get bigger. Also herbs, carrots, tons of volunteer calendula, and a columbine that decided to move in there just for fun.

So there, you see I have a ton of work to do. Plus my dissertation. Let’s not talk about my dissertation.