The Center for the Art of Translation

07/18/2025

LAST DAY to apply! ✏️ Opportunity for educators: Applications open through midnight PST JULY 18 for our 2025-27 Poetry Inside Out (PIO) Teaching Fellowship, the Center for the Art of Translation's education program. This fellowship is a 2-year funded program that supports U.S.-based educators in grades 3–12 interested in expanding their teaching practice through poetry, translation, & inquiry-based learning.

Full information and application link here ➡️ https://www.catranslation.org/about/opportunities/

07/15/2025

It's sweaty outside and the CAT Days of Summer are here! Find a cool spot and sprawl out with a good book. Now until July 20 only, we're offering major discounts on all our Two Lines Press titles. Support our publishing program and receive some great deals!

30% off all books
40% off if you're a Two Lines Press Member
FREE U.S. shipping on orders over $50

Stock up on your summer reads--> https://www.catranslation.org/books/

07/12/2025

LAST WEEK to apply! ✏️ Opportunity for educators: Applications open now through JULY 18 for the 2025-27 Poetry Inside Out (PIO) Teaching Fellowship, the Center for the Art of Translation's education program. This fellowship is a 2-year funded program that supports U.S.-based educators in grades 3–12 interested in expanding their teaching practice through poetry, translation, & inquiry-based learning.

Full information and application link here ➡️ https://www.catranslation.org/about/opportunities/

07/04/2025

🎉 Congratulations to Two Lines Press author Astrid Roemer! Her novel "On a Woman’s Madness" translated by Lucy Scott is a finalist for the Inside Literary Prize. This is an incredible award where the books were selected by a jury of 300 incarcerated individuals from a dozen prisons across the nation. The winner will be announced in July 10

Here’s what Alex Capilla, who was part of this year’s Freedom Reads Selection Committee, had to say about On a Woman’s Madness: “I just liked that it was raw and real. And it didn’t like—it wasn’t like one of those fairy-tale movies where like everything has glitter and glam, and everything’s going to turn out the way you expect. It’s about basically this one main character. Basically the things that she went through in life: the trauma, the ups, the downs, the things that have happened to her, the abuse... And it kind of reminds me a lot about the women that are here, actually.”

Get a copy of the book-->https://www.catranslation.org/shop/book/on-a-womans-madness/

07/03/2025

2 WEEKS left to apply! ✏️ Opportunity for educators: Applications open now through JULY 18 for the 2025-27 Poetry Inside Out (PIO) Teaching Fellowship, the Center for the Art of Translation's education program. This fellowship is a 2-year funded program that supports U.S.-based educators in grades 3–12 interested in expanding their teaching practice through poetry, translation, & inquiry-based learning.

Full information and application link here and 2024-26 Fellows pictured below. ➡️ https://www.catranslation.org/about/opportunities/

07/01/2025

5 DAYS LEFT! Submit by JULY 6: Open call for translations of literature from Asia and Oceania. Our publisher, Two Lines Press, is excited to open a focused submissions call for translations of literature from Asia and Oceania. They're looking to expand their list, which includes Duanwad Pimwana, Ho Sok Fong, Hon Lai Chu, Kim Sagwa, Carl de Souza, Masatsugu Ono, Xu Zechen, and the writers featured in "Unusual Fragments and That We May Live." As part of the Center for the Art of Translation's mission to seek out languages, authors, and translators traditionally under-valued or under-supported in English-language publishing, we highly encourage submissions of work from less-represented languages and from BIPOC, women, and/or q***r authors and translators.

Please note that at this time Two Lines Press is only considering pitches for novels, story collections, and literary non-fiction.

More information here ➡️ https://www.catranslation.org/books/submit-work/

06/30/2025

1 week left! Submit by JULY 6: Open call for contemporary trans writers working in hybrid for our new Calico/Two Lines Press collection. https://www.catranslation.org/books/submit-work/

06/17/2025

✏️ Opportunity for educators: Applications open now through JULY 18 for the 2025-27 Poetry Inside Out (PIO) Teaching Fellowship, the Center for the Art of Translation's education program. This fellowship is a 2-year funded program that supports U.S.-based educators in grades 3–12 interested in expanding their teaching practice through poetry, translation, & inquiry-based learning.

Full information and application link here ➡️ https://www.catranslation.org/about/opportunities/

Poetry Inside Out engages educators and their students in translating poems from around the world, encouraging close reading, cross-cultural appreciation, and active discussion about language and meaning. Fellows develop practices that engage students in exploring identity, culture, critical thinking, and multilingualism, helping them see themselves as global citizens. Apply by July 18 or share with your favorite educator!

06/13/2025

“It had this snowball-coming-down-the-mountain effect,” said Micheal Holtmann (President of the Center for the Art of Translation / Two Lines Press), after seeing a photo of the letter online. “I was like, ‘Oh, that sounds terrible.’ It wasn’t until after that I reflected on that, like, ‘Oh, one of those is probably coming my way, too.’ So it was probably a few hours after Chad Post at Open Letter Books had received that notification that I received a virtually identical email.”

The language of the message read in part: “The NEA is updating its grantmaking policy priorities to focus funding on projects that reflect the nation’s rich artistic heritage and creativity as prioritized by the President,” according to the Instagram post Holtmann recalled reading that night. “Consequently, we are terminating awards that fall outside these new priorities.”

Read the full piece in the Orange County Register. And if you'd like to help our indie press make up for lost funds, consider becoming a member of our book club! https://www.catranslation.org/books/memberships/

https://www.ocregister.com/2025/06/13/the-nea-cut-their-funding-but-californias-independent-publishers-press-on/

How Red Hen Press, Transit Books, Two Lines Press and the literary journal Zyzzyva plan to keep going in the face of government funding cuts.

06/10/2025

Happy pub day to BACKLIGHT, the final installment of Pirkko Saiso’s trilogy of autobiographical novels translated from Finnish by Mia Spangenberg.

1968 was the year of an unprecedented youth revolt in Finland, a movement that radicalized a generation and inspired leftist movements across the globe. As the riots raged a young Pirkko Saiso was away in Switzerland, working at an orphanage and trying her best to emulate Julie Andrew’s in The Sound of Music. She can't speak German, the children don’t care for her, and she strongly suspects that her coworkers may be lesbians—a suspicion that only grows as she presses her ear to the walls to listen to them every night.

Funny and daring, Backlight reminds us that there's more than one way to have a misspent youth.

📕 https://www.catranslation.org/shop/book/backlight/?blm_aid=37456

06/09/2025

Tuesday, June 10 Third Place Books Ravenna (Seattle) join Mia Spangenberg for a presentation on her recent translation of Finnish author Pirkko Saiso's novel BACKLIGHT, which follows a frustrated teenager into adulthood as she grapples with her q***rness and her potential as a writer. Mia will be joined in conversation by translator and publishing consultant Elizabeth DeNoma. BACKLIGHT is out tomorrow from our publisher, Two Lines Press.

RSVP--> https://www.thirdplacebooks.com/event/mia-spangenberg-elizabeth-denoma

About BACKLIGHT: Pirkko Saisio, now a teenager, can't decide which she hates most: God, her father, or her growing breasts. Grandpa has moved into the room long promised to her, and Mother, overworked and distant, tries to keep the peace between her headstrong daughter and husband. When she's not escaping into her books, Pirkko has fun getting into trouble. That is until her Finnish teacher suggests she might have what it takes to be a real writer, but only if she is willing to work hard and make certain sacrifices.

Years later, Pirkko spends the historic summer of 1968 working at a Swiss orphanage. The world is shifting around her, and to make matters even more complicated: she's homesick. At the orphanage no one understands her German, and away from home for the first time, she struggles to make sense of her suppressed q***rness. In Backlight, the Finlandia Prize-winning author looks backward and inward, once again emerging, in Mia Spangenberg's sensitive translation, with an intimate portrait of a life lived in language.

06/08/2025

Submit by JULY 6: Open call for translations of literature from Asia and Oceania. Our publisher, Two Lines Press, is excited to open a focused submissions call for translations of literature from Asia and Oceania. They're looking to expand their list, which includes Duanwad Pimwana, Ho Sok Fong, Hon Lai Chu, Kim Sagwa, Carl de Souza, Masatsugu Ono, Xu Zechen, and the writers featured in "Unusual Fragments and That We May Live." As part of the Center for the Art of Translation's mission to seek out languages, authors, and translators traditionally under-valued or under-supported in English-language publishing, we highly encourage submissions of work from less-represented languages and from BIPOC, women, and/or q***r authors and translators.

Please note that at this time Two Lines Press is only considering pitches for novels, story collections, and literary non-fiction.

More information here ➡️ https://www.catranslation.org/books/submit-work/