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Pulitzer Prize-winning author and translator Jhumpa Lahiri discusses her new work for The Cahiers Series, Bone Into Stone.
In this exploration of translation-as-metamorphosis, written after three years collaborating with her friend the classicist Yelena Baraz on a translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses into English, Lahiri focuses on the theme of stones and human transformation. The text of this work resonates alongside the dynamic and colourful paintings of celebrated artist Jamie Nares.
About the speaker:
Jhumpa Lahiri, a bilingual writer and translator, is the Millicent C. McIntosh Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at Barnard College (Columbia University). She received the Pulitzer Prize in 2000 for Interpreter of Maladies, her debut story collection. She is also the author of The Namesake, Unaccustomed Earth, and The Lowland, which was a finalist for both the Man Booker prize and the National Book Award in fiction. Since 2015, Lahiri has been writing fiction, essays, and poetry in Italian: In Altre Parole (In Other Words), Il vestito dei libri (The Clothing of Books), Dove mi trovo (self-translated as Whereabouts), Il quaderno di Nerina, and Racconti romani (Roman Stories). She has translated three novels by Domenico Starnone and is the editor of The Penguin Classics Book of Italian Short Stories. Lahiri received the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama in 2014, and in 2019 she was named Commendatore of the Italian Republic by President Sergio Mattarerlla. Her most recent book in English, a collection of essays entitled Translating Myself and Others, was a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay.
About The Cahiers Series:
The Cahiers Series is published by Sylph Editions in collaboration with The American University of Paris. The goal of this series is to make available new explorations in writing, in translating, and in the areas linking these two activities.
