#TurnItUP: How University Presses Bring World Literature to American Readers
By Annette Windhorn
This week marks the start of University Press Week, sponsored by the Association of University Presses, to celebrate the unique role university presses (UPs) play in the publishing world. Not-for-profit, and dedicated to publishing peer-reviewed, high-quality work, UPs have the freedom and the mission to publish books that might not otherwise find an audience in the mainstream.
This year, UP Week’s theme is #TurnItUP, which speaks right to that mission: a long, proud history of amplifying stories and authors whose stories might be overlooked. And their successes reach far beyond scholarly nonfiction subjects. One area of university press publishing that might surprise even a dedicated reader is their track record of publishing award-winning, ground-breaking fiction and poetry in translation.
Maryse Condé, winner of this year’s New Academy Prize in Literature (or the “not-Nobel”), is just the latest example of a university press author who has won literature’s top honor; both the University of Nebraska Press (The Last of the African Kings) and the University of Virginia Press (I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem) have published her work. Ten of the Nobel Laureates in Literature since 2000 have published work with university presses: Patrick Modiano, Mo Yan, Gao Xingjian, Imre Kertész (at the time, his work was only available in English from Northwestern University Press), J.M. Coetzee, Orhan Pamuk, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, Herta Müller, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Tomas Tranströmer.
How university presses decide which international fiction and poetry to publish varies by house: some are thematic; some focus on one part of the world; some publish books from contemporary authors while others choose books from the past that deserve to be rediscovered. What unifies these university press publishers is their desire to see diverse voices in the world—and on the bookshelves.
When it comes to a regional focus, Asian literature in translation has formed the bedrock of Columbia University Press’s list for the last 60 years. Under the direction of the late Wm. Theodore de Bary, the Press published influential anthologies and standard-setting translations, from Donald Keene’s translation of the Major Plays of Chikamatsu (1961) to The Art of War: Sun Zi’s Military Methods, translated by Victor Mair (2007). Continuing this tradition, this year CUP published Phyllis Lyon's translation of Jun'ichirō Tanizaki’s In Black and White and The Reincarnated Giant: An Anthology of Twenty-First-Century Chinese Science Fiction, edited by Mingwei Song and Theodore Huters.
“The scholarly conversation in which we participate is increasingly global in nature, and literature in translation informs our understanding of other countries and cultures, supporting the Press's mission and values,” said CUP editor Christine Dunbar.
Also building a regionally focused translation list, Ohio University Press published the short novel Marta by pioneering nineteenth-century feminist social realist author Eliza Orzeszkowa (translated by Anna Gąsienica Byrcyn and Stephanie Kraft) last summer. Orzeszkowa was a finalist for the 1905 Nobel Prize in Literature, alongside Leo Tolstoy and Henryk Sienkiewicz, and this publication is the latest in OUP’s Polish and Polish-American Studies Series, as well as in their partnership with the Polish American Historical Association.
In 2017, the University of Notre Dame Press established The Center for Ethics and Culture Solzhenitsyn Series. This series showcases the contributions and continuing inspiration of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008), the Nobel Prize–winning novelist and historian. The series makes available works of Solzhenitsyn, including previously untranslated works, and aims to provide the leading platform for exploring the many facets of his enduring legacy. The first two translations in the series are March 1917: The Red Wheel, Node III, Book 1, translated by Marian Schwartz and Between Two Millstones, Book 1: Sketches of Exile, 1974–1978, translated by Peter Constantine, just released this fall.
For many years, the University of Manitoba Press has included side-by-side translations in its Indigenous Studies titles, not only to make texts available to wider audiences but also to assist in language reclamation. Its Sounding Thunder: The Stories of Francis Pegahmagabow by Brian D. McInnes was praised by the jurors of the Fred Landon Award from the Ontario Historical Society for presenting family stories in Ojibwe as well as English and placing them within historical and geographical contexts. The press has also started commissioning translations of key French-language texts, including the first Inuit novel, Sanaaq by Mitiarjuk Nappaaluk, and the memoir of an Inuit soldier, From the Tundra to the Trenches by Eddy Weetaltuk.
Housed in offices above the renowned American University in Cairo bookstore, overlooking Tahrir Square, the American University in Cairo Press launched its Hoopoe imprint in 2016, aiming to publish outstanding fiction from the Middle East that challenges headlines, re-imagines histories, and celebrates original storytelling. “Hoopoe seeks fresh writing from Marrakesh to Baghdad and Khartoum to Aleppo for adventurous readers everywhere,” said Nadine El-Hadi, Hoopoe’s acquisitions editor, emphasizing that for over half a century, the press has brought writers from the Middle East to an English-speaking audience. Among the books published by AUCP this fall are the novel Sarab by award-winning writer Raja Alem, translated by Leri Price, and In the Spider’s Room by Muhammad Abdelnabi, translated by Jonathan Wright, telling the story of a gay man in Egypt who is captured and imprisoned as part of that country’s infamous Queen Boat affair.
Wayne State University Press has published over 30 titles in translation, with plans to publish many more, particularly in the areas of Judaic studies and fairy-tale studies. One book that falls into the latter category is A True Blue Idea by Marina Colasanti, translated by Adria Frizzi, which will be released in April 2019. Colasanti is a Brazilian journalist, visual artist, and author of over 60 volumes of short stories, poetry, essays, and children’s literature. Her books have been translated into several languages and recognized with numerous awards, including seven prestigious Jabuti Dourado prizes for best work of fiction. Despite Colasanti’s literary stature, A True Blue Idea will be the first book-length translation of her writing into English.
Some publishers cast a wider net. Yale University Press is the home to the Cecile and Theodore Margellos World Republic of Letters series. This series identifies works of cultural and artistic significance previously overlooked by translators and publishers, canonical works of literature and philosophy needing new translations, and works by important contemporary authors whose books have not yet been translated into English. The series includes winners of the Nobel Prize, the Best Translated Book Award, PEN Translation Prize, and Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize, among other internationally recognized awards. Just this fall, the series published the short story collection On My Aunt’s Shallow Grave White Roses Have Already Bloomed by Greek writer Maria Mitsora, translated by Jacob Moe; and the novel Sleep of Memory by bestselling French author (and Nobelist) Patrick Modiano, translated by Mark Polizzotti.
Likewise, Northwestern University Press—which appears in the bibliography of many international Nobelists— publishes translations of authors from numerous countries, cultures, and eras. In 2018 alone, the press’s new books included translations from Arabic, Polish, and Hindi, as well as Euripides’ Iphigenia Play, translated by Rachel Hadas.
The Latin America in Translation/En Traducción/Em Tradução series has been a joint initiative of Duke University Press, the University of North Carolina Press, and the UNC-CH and Duke Consortium since 1993. This year, The Vortex: A Novel by Colombian writer José Eustasio Rivera, translated by John Charles Chasteen, joined more than 40 books that have been published in this series. Widely considered a masterpiece of twentieth-century Latin American literature, issued in 1924, this is the first time the book has been published in the United States.
For decades, university presses have introduced American readers to cultures, customs, characters, and stories from countries other than our own. Our reading experiences would all be poorer if these books had not found publishers in the English language. As Wayne State University Press promotions manager Kristina Stonehill told me, “Good writing should be made available to everyone.” When university presses #TurnItUP, we hear stories and voices from all cultures—and enrich our own.
Annette Windhorn is the External Communications Manager of the Association of University Presses www.aupresses.org. University Press Week runs November 12-17; you can learn more at www.universitypressweek.org
