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The World in Translation: Frankétienne at the Miami Book Fair
November 22, 2014 @ 10:00 am - 11:30 am
Please join us at the Miami Book Fair for THE WORLD IN TRANSLATION – a conversation with Frankétienne, Kaiama L. Glover, Valerie Miles, and Betty Milan!
Considered by many to be the ‘father of Haitian letters, FRANKÈTIENNE is a prolific poet, novelist, visual artist, playwright, musician, and ‘spiraliste.’ He writes in both French and Haitian Creole and often juggles the two. His paintings have been exhibited internationally. An outspoken challenger of political oppression, Frankétienne was a candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2009 and, in 2010, was named a Commandeur dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Frankétienne is the author of Ready to Burst, the tale of a young man’s efforts to navigate the challenges of a deeply troubled society. The novel moves fluidly between his experiences and those of his alter ego, opening a window onto the absurd realities of a dictatorship. 
KAIAMA L. GLOVER is the translator of Ready to Burst. She received a B.A. in French History and Literature and Afro-American Studies from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in French and Romance Philology from Columbia University. She is now an associate professor of French at Barnard College. Her book, Haiti Unbound: A Spiralist Challenge to the Postcolonial Canon, explores the Haitian Spiralist movement. She sits on the editorial boards of the Romanic Reviewand Small Axe and regularly contributes to The New York Times Book Review.
VALERIE MILES is a publisher, writer, translator, and the co–founder of Granta en español. She is also the co-director of the New York Review of Books in its Spanish translation and, in 2013, was voted one of the “Most Influential Professionals in Publishing” by the Buenos Aires Book Fair. She is the editor of A Thousand Forests in One Acorn: An Anthology of Spanish-Language Fiction, an anthology of twenty-eight of the most important Spanish-language writers of the twentieth century. Unlike other anthologies, the stories and excerpts collected here were selected by the authors themselves and represent the “high point” of their writing career.
BETTY MILAN is from São Paulo. The author of novels, chronicles, essays, and plays, her works have also been published in France, Argentina, and China. She has written for Folha de S. Paulo and Veja magazine. Her latest book is Letter to My Son, a gripping book that examines what it is to be a mother and a woman, entirely based on the author’s own life from birth to maturity, including her studies with Lacan in Paris and her return to a Brazil that she rediscovers through analysis. Free from the notion that good mothers are infallible, Betty Milan communicates this liberation to her readers.
