BCLT Literary Translation Workshop with Charlotte Whittle: Write Like a Translator

In-person at the University of East Anglia

Wednesday 6 May, 5.30-7pm

We know we are writing when we translate, but what are we translating when we write? This workshop invites participants to think about the inextricable ties between writing and translation, encouraging translators to notice how their professional skills as readers and translators have equipped and prepared them to explore their own creative writing practice. Through discussion and structured writing exercises, you will emerge with renewed confidence in your own writing abilities.

Charlotte Whittle is a writer, editor, and literary translator whose work has appeared in The Literary Review, Los Angeles Times, Guernica, Electric Literature, BOMB, the Paris Review, and elsewhere. Her translation of Norah Lange's People in the Room was longlisted for the Best Translated Book Award and shortlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation and the Society of Authors First Translation Prize. She has received two PEN Translates awards and has translated novels by contemporary Spanish and Latin American authors such as Jorge Comensal and Elisa Victoria. For several years, she edited bilingual editions of Latin American poetry and ran cartonera bookmaking workshops at Cardboard House Press. Her most recent translation is Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World, the international bestseller by Irene Vallejo, for which she won the 2023 QSSI Translation Prize. She holds degrees from Oxford, Brown, and UEA, and divides her time between England and New York.