What are the histories, constraints, and possibilities of language in relation to bodies, origins, land, colonialism, gender, war, displacement, desire, and migration?

Moving across genres, memories, belongings, and borders, these luminous texts by poets, writers, and translators invite us to consider translation as a form of ethical and political love – one that requires attentive regard of an other – and a making and unmaking of self.

Nuzhat Abbas is a writer, editor, cultural worker and educator. She was born in Zanzibar and, after several detours, now resides in T'karonto. Her itinerant practice includes teaching literature, writing, gender, and migration at colleges and universities in Canada, the US and Europe; developing community-based writing projects with immigrants and refugees; and curating grass-roots cultural events and festivals. Her critical and creative work has appeared in various Canadian and international journals, anthologies and magazines.

 

Nuzhat Abbas' profile page

Françoise Vergès' profile page

Khairani Barokka's profile page

Yasmine Haj is a writer and translator from Nazareth, Palestine.

Yasmine Haj's profile page

Otoniya Okot Bitek's profile page

Suneela Mubayi's profile page

IRYN TUSHABE is a Ugandan-Canadian writer and journalist. Her creative nonfiction has appeared in Briarpatch Magazine, Adda, Prairies North, The Walrus and on CBC Saskatchewan. Her short fiction has been published in Grain Magazine, the Carter V. Cooper Short Fiction Anthology, and the Journey Prize Stories. She won the City of Regina writing award in 2020 and 2024, was a finalist for the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2021, and won the 2023 Writers’ Trust McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize. She lives in Regina with her partner, filmmaker Robin Schlaht, and two children.

Iryn Tushabe's profile page

Gopika Jadeja's profile page

Rahat Kurd is a writer and poet based in Vancouver. Her most recent publication, The City That Is Leaving Forever (Talonbooks 2021), is a hybrid of correspondence and poetry exchanged between Vancouver and Kashmir over a five year period with poet Sumayya Syed.Kurd’s first collection of poems, Cosmophilia, was published by Talonbooks in 2015. Kurd draws on multilingual poetics and is especially interested in the ghazal tradition in Urdu and Persian literature. With writer and poet Meredith Quartermain, Kurd co-curated and co-hosted The Rhizomatic, a monthly online poetry series featuring a single guest in a deep-dive format, from September 2020 until June 2021.Kurd was the guest editor of the 2019 Summer Supplement issue of The Puritan online literary magazine, publishing poetry and fiction around the theme, “What does it mean to be a Muslim writer?” Commissioned by composer Brian Current , Kurd’s libretto “Light Upon Light” was performed as part of an oratorio, The River of Light, at the Vancouver Opera Festival in May 2019.

Rahat Kurd's profile page

Geetha Sukumaran's profile page

Norah Alkharashi is a literary translator, visual artist, and emerging scholar from Saudi Arabia, now based in Ottawa.

Norah Alkharashi's profile page

Lisa Ndejuru's profile page

Nedra Rodrigo's profile page

"When a feminist translator responds to her calling, the world is enlarged and a better place. This book is exquisite in its scope and its well-thought out approach to translation." - Wangui wa Goro, translator of Véronique Tadjo and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o.

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"Reading these rich, personal and lyrical essays allowed me to connect with the lived experience of translation – each author shares not only a passion for language, but also their experience with the sound, taste, smell, music, and even posture, of various languages of the global South... their words reflect on decolonial and feminist practices in translation while celebrating the beauty and the possibility of language, its ecstasies and its efflorescence, and what it means to live between tongues." -Dr. Mehr Farooqi, University of Virginia. Author, Ghalib: A Wilderness at my Doorstep.

* "A powerful exploration of the complex and pressing issues facing translation now. With a deep commitment to interrogating the act of translation from the ground up, this volume tackles questions of translatability and resists regimes of monolingualism and borders. These politically charged essays offer a much-needed nourishing approach to translation, bringing acute attention to the processual in translation. For anyone interested in the power and politics of translation in our world today, this collection is a must-read." –Dr. Dima Ayoub, Middlebury College. Author, Paratext and Power: Modern Arabic Literature in Translation (forthcoming)