Broadcast live by the Society of Authors in Week 11 of the SoA @ Home Festival on 29 June 2020.

Presented by Anna Ganley.

At a time when travel is restricted and our horizons seem limited, we need translators more than ever to help us navigate the world. Award-winning translators Daniel Hahn, Katy Derbyshire and Arunava Sinha explore creativity in lockdown and read from work in progress.

—

Katy Derbyshire was born in London and has lived in Berlin for much of her adult life. She translates contemporary German writers, including Olga Grjasnowa, Angela Steidele and Clemens Meyer, whose Bricks and Mortar was nominated for the Booker International Prize. Katy (usually) co-hosts a monthly translation lab and the bi-monthly Dead Ladies Show, and is now publisher at V&Q Books, bringing remarkable writing from Germany to the UK and Ireland from September.

Arunava Sinha translates classic, modern and contemporary Bengali fiction and nonfiction into English. Fifty-six of his translations have been published so far. Twice the winner of the Crossword translation award and the winner of the Muse India translation, he has also been shortlisted for The Independent Foreign Fiction prize and for the Global Literature in Libraries Initiative Translated YA Book Prize, and longlisted for the Best Translated Book award, USA. Besides India, his translations have been published in the UK and the US in English, and in several European and Asian countries through further translation. He is an associate professor of practice in the Creative Writing department at Ashoka University. He was born and grew up in Kolkata, and lives and writes in New Delhi.

Daniel Hahn is a writer, editor and translator. His most recent translation is Juan Pablo Villalobos’s I Don’t Expect Anyone to Believe Me.