Translators in Publishing

Katherine M. Hedeen

Katherine M. Hedeen is a translator of poetry, literary critic, and essayist. A specialist in Latin American poetry, she has translated some of the most respected voices from the region. Her publications include book-length collections by Jorgenrique Adoum, Juan Bañuelos, Juan Calzadilla, Antonio Gamoneda, Fina García Marruz, Juan Gelman, Raúl Gómez Jattin,Fayad Jamís,Hugo Mujica, José Emilio Pacheco, Víctor Rodríguez Núñez, and Ida Vitale, among many others. Her work has been a finalist for both the Best Translated Book Award and the National Translation Award. She is a recipient of two NEA Translation grants in the US and a PEN Translates award in the UK. She is a Managing Editor for Action Books. She resides in Gambier, Ohio, where she is Professor of Spanish at Kenyon College.

Mx Shook

Shook is a Los Angeles-based poet, translator, and editor. Their debut collection Our Obsidian Tongues was longlisted for the 2013 International Dylan Thomas Prize; poems from that book have been translated into Arabic, French, Isthmus Zapotec, Kurmanji, Japanese, Mandarin, Sorani, Spanish, Swedish, and Uyghur. The book was adapted into a short film in Rwanda, and published in Chile as Lenguas de obsidiana in late 2019. In 2013 Shook founded nonprofit publishing house Phoneme Media, which has since published over thirty books translated from twenty-six different languages, including the first ever literary translations from languages like Lingala and Uyghur. Shook has translated over fourteen books from Spanish and Isthmus Zapotec, including work by Mario Bellatin, Tedi López Mills, and Víctor Terán. Their most recent translation, Jorge Eduardo Eielson’s Room in Rome, was a finalist for the 2020 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation.