Writers' Lunch: Crossing Languages in Writing
Channel: Mechanics' Institute
Date: 2024-03-19

Writers' Lunch, hosted by Mechanics' Institute, is a casual and virtual brown bag lunch activity on the 3rd Friday of each month. Look forward to excellent conversations on all forms of writing! FREE! All are welcome. Register at milibrary.org/events

This special session of Writers' Lunch, on the topic "Crossing Languages in Writing," was co-presented with the Center for the Art of Translation, celebrating the intersection of International Women's Day (March 8) and the International Day of Multilingualism (March 27). It is a writerly discussion on the topic "Crossing Languages in Writing" with Cristina García, Grace Loh Prasad, and Saskia Vogel. This event was moderated by Sheryl J. Bize-Boutte, and broadcasted live on Zoom on Friday, March 15 at 12:00 pm.

Panelists' Bios

Cristina García is the author of eight novels: Dreaming in Cuban, The Agüero Sisters, Monkey Hunting, A Handbook to Luck, The Lady Matador’s Hotel, King of Cuba, Here in Berlin, and Vanishing Maps (Knopf, July 2023). Additional publications include two Latinx anthologies (Cubanísimo: The Vintage Book of Contemporary Cuban Literature and Bordering Fires: The Vintage Book of Contemporary Mexican and Chicano/a Literature); books for young readers (The Dog Who Loved the Moon, I Wanna Be Your Shoebox, and Dreams of Significant Girls); and a collection of poetry, The Lesser Tragedy of Death. García’s work has been nominated for a National Book Award and translated into fifteen languages. She’s the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University, and an NEA grant, among others. García has taught at universities nationwide. Recently, she was a Visiting Professor at University of San Francisco and is now Resident Playwright at Central Works Theater in Berkeley.

Grace Loh Prasad is the author of The Translator’s Daughter (Mad Creek Books/The Ohio State University Press, March 2024). She writes frequently on the topics of diaspora and belonging for publications such as The New York Times, Longreads, The Offing, Hyperallergic, Catapult, KHÔRA, and others. A member of The Writers Grotto and the AAPI writers’ collective Seventeen Syllables, Prasad lives in the Bay Area.

Saskia Vogel is the author of Permission, a novel on grief, desire, and coastal Los Angeles that was published in five languages and longlisted for the Believer Book Award. She is also the deputy editor theErotic Review, a 30-year-old UK arts and lifestyle journal which relaunched in March 2024. Her writing focuses on desire, landscape, subculture, and care, and has been awarded the Berlin Senate Endowment for Non-German Literature. She can be read in Granta, The Paris Review, The White Review, The Offing, The Literary Hub, and more. A translator of over two dozen Swedish-language books, her work has won the Bernard Shaw Prize (Johanne Lykke Holm's Strega), the CLMP Firecracker Award for Fiction (Johannes Anyuru’s They Will Drown in Their Mothers’ Tears), has been shortlisted for the PEN Translation Prize (Jessica Schiefauer’s Girls Lost), as well as having been supported by grants from the Swedish Arts Council, the Swedish Authors’ Fund, and English PEN. She was Princeton University’s Translator in Residence in fall 2022, where she completed her translation of Linnea Axelsson's Sámi epic Aednan. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she lives in Berlin.

Moderator's Bio

Award-winning author and Pushcart Prize nominee Sheryl J. Bize-Boutte is an Oakland multidisciplinary writer whose autobiographical and fictional short story collections, along with her lyrical and stunning poetry, artfully succeed in getting across deeper meanings about the politics of race and economics without breaking out of the narrative.  Her writing has been variously described as “rich in vivid imagery,” “incredible,” and “great contributions to literature.” Her first novel, Betrayal on the Bayou, was published in June 2020 and a poetry collection she has written with her daughter Dr. Angela M. Boutte, titled No Poetry No Peace™, was published in August 2020 and is the namesake of the No Poetry No Peace™ series at the Mechanics Institute of San Francisco. Her in progress novel first chapter, “The Burden Keeper,” was the 2021 fiction category winner for the San Francisco Writers Conference writing contest anthology. An inaugural Oakland Poet Laureate runner-up, she is also a popular teacher, literary reader, presenter, storyteller, curator, and emcee/host for literary and poetry events. Find out more at www.sheryljbize-boutte.com/