Chosen Tongue

Jesse Lee Kercheval is an award-winning artist, writer, poet, and translator. Her most recent books include the poetry collections, I want to tell you, and Un Pez Dorado no te sirve para nada. Selected poems translated by Ezequiel Zaindenwerg and published in Uruguay by editorial Yaugarù, which also published Jesse's collection of Spanish language poetry, Extranjera/Stranger. Jesse's other books include America that island off the Coast of France, The Alice Stories, and the memoir Space, all of which won important awards. Jess's translations include poems by Idea Vilariño and Circe Maia. Jess is the Zona Gale Professor Emerita of English at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the editor of the Wisconsin Poetry Series at the University of Wisconsin Press. Jesse's graphic memoir, French Girl, is forthcoming from Philmau's Press. She currently lives between Madison, Wisconsin and Montevideo, Uruguay. Together, we discuss Jesse's experience of becoming a translingual writer in Spanish, how she discovered her love for Spanish while living in Uruguay, and how it led her to become a translator of Uruguayan poetry. Jesse also talked about the challenges and joys of writing poetry in Spanish, the impact of switching language on a writer's voice, and the reception of her work in a second language.

Jenny Liao is a Chinese -American writer born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She is the author of two children's books, Everyone Loves Lunchtime but Zia and Everyone Loves Career Day but Zia. Jenny's writing has been featured in The New Yorker and Bon Appetit. Jenny currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two Calico cats, Donald and Bigné, and you can find her on Instagram and Twitter, @jaleao, or on her website, jaleao.com. We discussed how Jenny's been working to regain fluency in her mother tongue, Cantonese, through classes and practicing with a mother, how challenging it is to translate certain concepts from one tongue to the other, and how you can lose a mother tongue but never completely grieve its loss. 

Avra Margariti is a queer author, Greek sea monster and Rhysling-nominated poet with the fondness for the dark and the darling. Avra's work haunts publications such as Strange Horizons, The Deadlands, F &SF, Podcastle, Asimov's, Vastarien and Reckoning. You can find Avra on Twitter @AvraMargariti. Together we discussed Avra's early publishing experience and the inspiration she found in Greek authors writing in English. Avra also expressed her concern about the retelling of Greek mythology in Anglo -Saxon literature and the commodification of Greek myths for branding purposes. Finally, Avra highlighted the importance of preserving the Greek vibe and folklore in writing, and she offered advice for writers starting to write in a second language.

Alina Stefanescu was born in Romania and lives in Birmingham, Alabama. Alina is the author of several publications, including a creative nonfiction chapbook, Ribald (Bull City Press Inch Series, Nov. 2020) and Dor, which won the Wandering Aengus Press Prize (September, 2021). Her debut fiction collection, Every Mask I Tried On, won the Brighthorse Books Prize (April 2018). Alina's poems, essays, and fiction can be found in Prairie Schooner, North American Review, World Literature Today, Pleiades, Poetry, BOMB, Crab Creek Review, and others. She serves as poetry editor for several journals, reviewer and critic for others, and Co-Director of PEN America's Birmingham Chapter. She is currently working on a novel-like creature. More online at www.alinastefanescuwriter.com. We discussed how Alina started writing creatively to bridge the gap between her Romanian and American identities, the self-censorship she feels as an immigrant writer and how her voice changes when switching between Romanian and English. 

Ana Maria Caballero is a Colombian-American literary artist whose work explores how biology delimits societal and cultural rites, ripping the veil off romanticized motherhood and questioning notions that package sacrifice as a virtue. She's the recipient of the Beverly International Prize, Colombia’s José Manuel Arango National Poetry Prize, the Steel Toe Books Poetry Prize, a Future Arts Writer Award, a Sevens Foundation Grant and has been a finalist for numerous other literary and arts prizes. We discussed how her themes and writing style have evolved with each language, the growing presence of digital and crypto poetry, and her use of AI in poetry and art, highlighting the different interpretations of prose and poetry, in Spanish and English.  Caballero is the author of Mammal (forthcoming via Steel Tool Books, 2024); Cortadas (forthcoming from S/W Ediciones, 2025); A Petit Mal (Black Spring Press, 2023); Tryst (Alexandria Publishing, 2022); mid-life (Finishing Line Press, 2016); Reverse Commute (Silver Birch Press, 2014); Entre domingo y domingo (Valparaíso Ediciones, 2023 and 2014).   She lives in Madrid with her husband and children.   

Alison Mooney is a poet, storyteller and dancer who has lived in France, the US, Ireland, Germany, and now lives in Brussels.  For many years she worked across Europe in the private sector, before joining the European Parliament 10 years ago. In 2020, Alison won the Cicero Speechwriting Award, from the US Professional Speechwriters Association, for a poetic motivational speech. In 2022, she was appointed speechwriter to the President of the European Parliament. In 2023, Alison self-published a collection of multilingual poetry: Balance – in mind, in body, in soul. The first edition was sold out within weeks and Alison has been giving poetry readings in Brussels, Dublin, Connemara, and France. Her multilingual poetry collection is a journey on a tight-rope in search of balance: in mind, in body, in soul. Accompanyied by photography from award-winning photographer Sean Hayes, Alison Mooney’s book is graphically built like an art triptych. On one side, poems of grief, on the other poems of healing and suspended in the centre a speech on finding balance.  You can listen to Alison's prize-winning motivational speech here. Here, you can listen to Alison reading her poem Beyond You, from her collection. 

  Mordecai Martin is an Ashkenazi Jewish writer, a Bisexual Psychiatric Survivor, an aspiring translator of Yiddish and Spanish, and a fifth generation New Yorker. He lives in Washington Heights, Manhattan with his wife, son, and cat. He is an MFA candidate at Randolph College in Lynchburg, VA. In his non-fiction he writes to explore family, history, place, and mental illness. In his fiction, he strives to chronicle and capture the peculiarities of voice, the miraculous nature of event, and the depths and edges of Jewish humanity. Using his translation skills, he hopes to create hybridized texts that make personal essays out of translator notes and prefaces, to confound the traditional separation between translator, translated, reader, writer, narrator and self. His creative non-fiction has appeared in Honey Literary, Catapult Magazine, Longleaf Review, Peach Magazine, Autofocus Lit, Anti-Heroin Chic Magazine and The Hypocrite Reader. His fiction has been featured in Identity Theory, Timber Journal, X-Ray Lit, Gone Lawn, Knight’s Library Magazine, Funicular, and Sortes.

Victoria Buitron is an award-winning writer who hails from Ecuador and resides in Connecticut. She received an MFA in Creative Writing from Fairfield University. Her debut memoir-in-essays, A Body Across Two Hemispheres, was the 2021 Fairfield Book Prize winner. A VONA fellow, her work has been selected for 2022’s Best Small Fictions and Wigleaf’s Top 50. In 2023, she received the Artistic Excellence Award from the Connecticut Office of the Arts. She is currently the Competitions Editor for Harbor Review. She had the joy and privilege of selecting the nonfiction, fiction, and poetry for the 2023 Connecticut Literary Anthology and will be returning in 2024 as the project’s nonfiction editor. In winter 2024, she will be working with Tin House to complete her poetry book and will later attend a writing residency by Sundress Publications in Knoxville, Tennessee. Because she embraces creative chaos, she is also working on a novel about love, violence, and betrayal. We discussed her creative life between Spanish and English, her memoir, and how her mood sometimes dictates which language she will reading and writing in.   Music by Oleksi Holubiev & Monument Music          

Pim Wangtechawat is a Thai-Chinese writer from Bangkok, Thailand. She graduated with Distinction from Edinburgh Napier University in Scotland with a Masters in Creative Writing. Her debut novel, The Moon Represents My Heart, was published by OneWorld Publications in the UK in June 2023. Television rights sold after a competitive auction to 21 Laps and Netflix, with actress Gemma Chan set to star and produce. We discussed how Pim started writing in English, the doubts she faced in the beginning, and how today she advises young writers to own their multiculturalism and just tell their stories without being afraid.    Music by Oleksi Holubiev & Monument Music    

Andrea Jurjević is a Croatian poet, writer, and literary translator living in the US. She is the author of two poetry collections and a chapbook: In Another Country, winner of the 2022 Saturnalia Books Prize; Small Crimes, winner of the 2015 Philip Levine Prize; and Nightcall, which was the 2021 ACME Poem Company Surrealist Series selection. Andrea’s book-length translations from Croatian include Olja Savičević’s Mamasafari (Diálogos Press, 2018) and Marko Pogačar’s Dead Letter Office (The Word Works, 2020), which was shortlisted for the 2021 National Translation Award in Poetry. You can read Only River is Fluent here: https://www.thenormalschool.com/blog/2023/10/11/andrea-jurjevic   Music by Oleksi Holubiev & Monument Music    

Mathieu Cailler is the author of seven books: one novel, two short story collections, two volumes of poetry, and two children’s titles. His stories, poems, and essays have appeared in over one hundred publications, including The Saturday Evening Post and the Los Angeles Times. He is the recipient of numerous awards, most notably the Shakespeare Award, the Short Story America Prize, the New England Book Festival Award, the Los Angeles Book Festival Prize, and the Paris Book Festival Prize.  We discussed how he decided to write children's books in Spanish, what makes him feel like a Frenchman in America and an American in France, and how strange and elating it is for him when people pronounce his name correctly. Feel free to connect with him on social media @writesfromla or at mathieucailler.com. 

Mileva Anastasiadou is a neurologist from Athens, Greece, and the author of We Fade with Time, a flash fiction collection published in 2022 by Alien Buddha Press. A Pushcart, Best of the Net, Best Microfiction and Best Small Fiction nominated writer, Mileva's work can be found in many journals, such as The Chestnut Review, New World Writing, Milk Candy Review, The Bureau Dispatch, and others. We discussed how Mileva's Greek publisher encouraged her to switch languages, how hard writing in English felt in the beginning, but also how it turned out to be a unique way she could look at her life and dissect her experience. In this episode Mileva reads He Used to Be Gold, first published in Bending Genres, Issue Sixteen, August 2020. 

Francesco Dimitri is the author of four books in English and several more in his native Italian. Originally from the Southern region of Puglia, Francesco moved to London at 27 without speaking a word of English and a decade later he published his first book in his adoptive tongue, To Read Aloud.  Three more followed and his latest novel, The Dark Side of the Sky, will be published next Spring.   We discussed what prompted him to change his life and his writing language, how he learnt to translate his soul into English, and how his native Puglia remains in English a unique, mythical setting for his novels.  

Melissa Llanes Brownlee (she/her), a native Hawaiian writer living in Japan, has work published and forthcoming in The Rumpus, Fractured Lit, Flash Frog, Gigantic Sequins, Cream City Review, Cincinnati Review miCRo, Indiana Review, Craft, swamp pink, Pinch and Moon City Review, and honored in Best Small Fictions, Best Microfictions, and Wigleaf Top 50. Read Hard Skin from Juventud Press and Kahi and Lua from Alien Buddha. She tweets @lumchanmfa and talks story melissallanesbrownlee.com. We discussed the progressive disappearance of Hawaiian as a consequence of colonization, the role played by pidgin in Hawaiian society, how it is a refuge from the dominant, American culture, and a stigma at the same time, how English is both a colonizing language and the only mean to tell the truth about Hawaii to a worldwide audience. 

Andre Aciman is an Italian-American writer, born and raised in Alexandria, Egypt. He currently is a distinguished professor at the CUNY Graduate Center,  where he teaches the history of literary theory and the works of  Marcel Proust. Andre is the author of a memoir, Out of Egypt, and several novels, including Call Me by Your Name, whose film adaptation, written by James Ivory, won an Oscar in 2018 alongside a very long list of other awards. We discussed his cosmopolitan upbringing, the fact that there isn’t a place he truly calls home, and how his French and Italian roots have shaped his writing in English.   

Nabeela Ahmed is a writer, multilingual poet, spoken word artist and storyteller. She writes and shares her work in English, Urdu and Pahari. Her poetry was the main feature of Keighley Arts and Film Festival in 2020. She teaches creative writing and poetry workshops. She has had poems published in England, America, Pakistan and India.Her poetry manuscript was shortlisted by Verve Poetry Press in 2022. Her novella, Despite our Differences is available on Amazon.  We spoke about what goes amiss while switching from one language to the other, what's there to be gained, what it means for multicultural children to be able to express themselves in all the languages they are exposed to, and how to stay true to oneself, avoiding the trap of cultural clichés as a translingual writer. Nabila read two of her poems:     FB: Nabeela Ahmed Insta: @nabeela__ahmed Twitter: @n_ehmed  

Elvis Bego was born in Bosnia, fled the war there at age twelve and now lives in Copenhagen. His work can be found in Agni, Best American Essays 2020, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Threepenny Review, Tin House, and elsewhere. He is at work on a novel.   In this episode, we discuss the dramatic events that led him to leave his homeland, his decision to embrace English over the many languages he's fluent in, the inspiration he draws from Isak Dinesen aka Karen Blixen, and the intriguing way his writing style evolves according to the language he's working in.    At the end of the episode, Elvis reads an excerpt from his story Portrait Of The Artist As A Boy Couching, published earlier this year on Joyland Magazine.    You can find him on X @CitizenBego

Rajia Hassib is the Egyptian-American author of two widely reviewed novels: In the Language of Miracles and A Pure Heart . She moved to the U.S. when she was 23 and a few years later, she started writing fiction in English. In a beautiful article  written for LitHub a few months ago, Rajia reflected on what switching tongues meant for her and for her creativity, and how it gave her more artistic freedom. In this episode of Chosen Tongue, we chatted about the emotional impact of choosing English to share her point of view and her story as a Muslim woman in the U.S., Raja's fascination with Nabokov as a translingual writer, and how her sense of humour may or may not have recovered from her switch to English.