Bringing a New Audience to Arabic Literature
Date September, 08 2022
Location Virtual
In collaboration with American Literary Translators Association (ALTA), the Sheikh Zayed Book Award held a virtual panel discussion titled “Bringing a New Audience to Arabic Literature", hosting Michael Cooperson, SZBA 2021 Translation winner & Sawad Hussein, the 2022 translator in residence at the British Centre for Literary Translation. The discussion was moderated by Chip Rossetti, Editorial Director, Library of Arabic Literature.
The translators discussed the process by which they were able to write and publish their books, gain attention from the audience, and how other translators may take advantage of these opportunities to expand Arabic stories and culture to new English-speaking audiences.
Speakers
Michael Cooperson
An American author and translator, Cooperson studied at Harvard University and the American University of Cairo, and is currently a professor of Arabic language and literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has published two monographs on early Abbasid cultural history: ‘Classical Arabic Biography’ and ‘Al-Ma'mun’. In addition to Impostures, he has translated Abdelfattah Kilito's ‘L'Auteur et ses doubles (The Author and his Doubles)’ and Ibn al-Jawzi's ‘Manaqib al-Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal (Virtues of the Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal)’. His other interests include Maltese language and culture.
Sawad Hussain
The winner of the 2019 Arablit Short Story Prize and two English PEN Translates awards. She co-teaches a workshop on translating Arabic comics at UK secondary schools via the collective Shadow Heroes. Her recent translations include resistance novella Passage to the Plaza (shortlisted for the 2020 Palestine Book Awards) and the groundbreaking experimental short fiction collection A Bed for the King's Daughter. She holds an MA in modern Arabic literature from the School of Oriental and African Studies.
Chip Rossetti
Translator and the managing editor of the Library of Arabic Literature translation series at NYU Press. He has a