The panel will be hosted virtually, on Zoom, on September 30th, 2020 at 7 pm EST. RSVP for free here.

On International Translation Day, McNally Jackson Independent Booksellers are hosting Nandana Sen, Tess Lewis, and Linn Mehta as they celebrate linguistic and literary diversity by sharing their translations of works by three beloved writers.

An actor, writer, and child-rights activist, Nandana Sen has authored six children’s books, translated into 15 languages globally. She grew up in India, England and America, and has starred in twenty feature films from four continents. The winner of the Last Girl Champion Award, as well as multiple Best Actress awards, Nandana has served on the jury of a number of child-protection commissions, global film festivals, and international literary awards. She’ll be sharing her English translations of the Bengali poetry of her celebrated mother Nabaneeta Dev Sen (from her previous book Make Up Your Mind, as well as her forthcoming collection from Archipelago Books, Acrobat).

Nabaneeta Dev Sen will remain one of the best-loved Bengali writers of all time. She published her first (and very successful) book of poems at the age of 18, and grew to be immensely popular in every genre, including novels, short stories, literary criticism, travelogues, plays, humor, narrative non-fiction, political columns, and children’s literature. Her many literary honors include the Padmashri, Sahitya Akademi Award, Bangla Academy Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Publishers’ and Booksellers’ Guild. Dr. Dev Sen was a tireless mentor to innumerable students and young writers, and was the Founder and President of the Women Writers’ Association, Soi.

Tess Lewis is a writer and translator from French and German. Her translations include works by Walter Benjamin, Christine Angot, Philippe Jaccottet, and Peter Handke. Her recent awards include the 2017 PEN Translation Prize for Maja Haderlap’s Angel of Oblivion, published by Archipelago Books, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She’ll be sharing her English translation of One Another, a novel by the German author Monique Schwitter.

Linn Cary Mehta has taught English and Comparative Literature at Columbia, Yale, Vassar, and currently at Barnard College and at NYU, and worked as a Program Officer in Education and Culture at the Ford Foundation. Having graduated from Yale (BA 1977) and Oxford (MA 1988), she received her Ph.D. from Columbia University in 2004 and, in 2015, published Poetry and Politics of Decolonization: Tagore, Yeats, Senghor, Césaire, and Neruda. She’ll be sharing her English translation of the French writer Louis Calaferte, author of Three Beggars and A Rich Man.