International Writers Festival—Kitchen Table Translations Revisited
Tuesday, September 29, 2026 1:30 PM to 3:00 PM EDT
Art & Design Building, Gillespie Gallery, First Floor, Art and Design Bldg Fairfax
What can "immigrants, children of immigrants, or people who identify as part of a diaspora" bring "to the task of translation that [is] distinct from the mainstream of literary translation in the United States[?]" Thinking about the space between language, place, and self, Madhu Kaza curated Kitchen Table Translations in 2017 to showcase and explore these voices. Beginning from this perspective, Kaza shares her evolving thoughts on the practice of translation and leads an interactive conversation with beginner translators.
Born in Andhra Pradesh, India, Madhu H. Kaza is a writer, translator, artist and educator based in New York City. She is the author of Lines of Flight and the editor of Kitchen Table Translation, a volume that explores connections between translation and migration. Her writing has appeared in Granta, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Yale Review, Gulf Coast, Guernica, Two Lines, Chimurenga, and more. She has been awarded fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Jerome Foundation, the Yaddo Corporation, Bard College, and Bucknell University. She received an M.Phil in Comparative Literature from New York University. She worked for several years for the Bard Prison Initiative and currently teaches translation in the graduate writing program at Columbia University. She is at work on a book about landscape, poetry, painting and belonging titled Vale of Cashmere.
