Night in Translation with Miguel Avero, Nancy Naomi Carlson, and Jona Colson

This event is in partnership with Washington Writers’ Publishing House.
We are thrilled to be hosting a Night in Translation to celebrate the release of Aguas/Waters, written by Miguel Avero and translated by Jona Colson, and Solio, written by Samira Negrouche and translated by Nancy Naomi Carlson.

Aguas/Waters introduces the rich and vibrant imagery of Uruguayan poet Miguel Avero to the English-speaking world. Selected works from two of his early collections highlight the legacy of magical realism and rioplatense rhythms in this prolific poet’s fierce style. This first bilingual edition matches each original Spanish poem with an inspired translation by Washington D.C. poet Jona Colson. Aguas/Waters is the premier selection in the Biennial WWPH Translation Series.

Miguel Avero was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, and is a poet, narrator, essayist, teacher, and researcher. He is the co-founder of Orientacion Poesia and On the Path of Dogs. He directs the writing workshop, “Puerta Quimera,” and has appeared in various national and international anthologies. He has published various collections of poems, including Arca de aserrin (Ediciones en blanco; 2011), and the novella Michaela Moon (Travesia Ediciones, 2014). In 2016, Avero published the books Let Nobody Ask About You (Bestial Barracuda Babilonica, poetic prose) and La Pieza (Walkie Talkie Ediciones, poetry). He won the first Espacio Mixtura poetry prize with the book Libreta insomne (Editorial Primero de Mayo, 2019). In 2020, he published Haiku mate (Ediciones del Demiurgo, poetry) co-authored with the Minuan Poet, Leonardo de Leon. In 2022, Prosperidad, a hybrid text of poetry, essays, and memoirs, was released by Ginko Ediroia. Recently, by the same publishing house, the book of short stories Michaela Moon y otros tentativas (2023) was published. Much of Avero’s work has been translated into English and French.

Jona Colson is an educator and poet. His poetry collection, Said Through Glass, won the Jean Feldman poetry prize from the Washington Writers’ Publishing House. His poems, translations, and interviews have appeared in The Southern Review, Ploughshares, LitHub, and elsewhere. He is currently a professor at Montgomery College in Maryland where he teaches English as a Second Language. He is co-president of the Washington Wrtiers’ Publishing House and poetry editor of WWPH Writes. He lives in Washington, DC.

In Solio, Samira Negrouche reminds us that ‘all life is movement,’ where ���time passes through me / beings pass through me / they are me / I am them.’ The ‘I’ is representative of one voice, three voices, all voices, all rooted in movement as their bodies brush past one another, brush against thresholds of time and space. Everything is in flux—including the dream-like landscapes at the borders of borders—as the poet seeks to recover parts of self and memory, on both a personal and universal level. In these poems, history-laden locales such as Algiers, Timbuktu, N’Djamena, Cotonou, Zanzibar, Cape Town and Gorée are evoked. Even the language, expertly and sensitively translated by Nancy Naomi Carlson, refuses to be pinned down, as it loops back on itself. At times contradictory, at times fractured in meaning, syntax and diction, the playful language is riddled with ‘restless’ verbs. In the end, the ‘I’ takes on prophetic overtones, instilling hope for the future.

Nancy Naomi Carlson is a poet, translator, essayist, and winner of the 2022 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize from Oxford University. Author of fourteen titles (nine translated), her second poetry collection, as well as her co-translation of Wendy Guerra, were noted in the New York Times. A recipient of two translation grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and decorated by the French government with the Academic Palms, Carlson has earned two doctoral degrees and is the Translations Editor for On the Seawall. Her work has appeared in Poem-a-Day, American Poetry Review, The Georgia Review, Paris Review, Poetry, and The Writer’s Chronicle.