Join us at Berl’s Brooklyn Poetry Shop for an evening of reading and discussion of Abdellatif Laâbi’s In Praise of Defeat, featuring the volume’s translator, Donald Nicholson-Smith, and literary translator Emma Ramadan.

Donald Nicholson-Smith was born in Manchester, England and is a longtime resident of New York City. His translations, ranging from psychoanalysis and social criticism to crime fiction, include works by Thierry Jonquet, Guy Debord, Paco Ignacio Taibo II, Henri Lefebvre, Raoul Vaneigem, Antonin Artaud, Jean Laplanche, and J. B. Pontalis. His translation of Apollinaire’s Letters to Madeleine was short-listed for the 2012 French-American Foundation Prize for Nonfiction and in 2014 he won the Foundation’s Fiction Prize for his translation of Jean-Patrick Manchette’s The Mad and the Bad.

Emma Ramadan is a literary translator based in Providence, Rhode Island, where she is also the co-owner of Riffraff, a bookstore and bar. She is the recipient of a Fulbright scholarship, an NEA Translation Fellowship, and a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant, all for her translations of Moroccan writer Ahmed Bouanani’s poetry. Her other translations include Anne Garréta’s Sphinx, Fouad Laroui’s The Curious Case of Dassoukine’s Trousers, Anne Parian’s Monospace, and Frédéric Forte’s 33 Flat Sonnets.

Poet, novelist, playwright, translator, and political activist, Abdellatif Laâbi was born in Fez, Morocco in 1942. He was also the founder of Souffles, an important literary review that was banned in Morocco in 1972. Laâbi received the Prix Robert Ganzo de Poésie in 2008, the Prix Goncourt de la Poésie for his Oeuvres complètes in 2009, and the Académie Française’s Grand Prix de la Francophonie in 2011. Also available in English are his debut collection of poetry The Rule of Barbarism, the memoir Rue de Retour, and The World’s Embrace: Selected Poems.

This event is part of the 2017 St. Jordi Festival, of which Archipelago Books is a proud sponsor. For more events, or to learn more, click here.