International Writers Festival—Ping-Ponging Across Languages
Tuesday, September 29, 2026 3:00 PM EDT
Art & Design Building, GIllespie Gallery, First Floor, Art and Design Bldg Fairfax
Featuring Nancy Naomi Carlson, Sylvie Kande, and Saaret E. Yoseph. Moderated by Heather Green.
Nancy Naomi Carlson won the 2022 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. Author of seventeen titles (twelve translated), her work has been noted in the New York Times, The Washington Post, and Ms. Magazine. A recipient of two translation grants from the NEA and decorated by the French government with the Academic Palms, she’s a translations editor for On the Seawall and Pleiades. Translating Alain Mabanckou’s Congo (Seagull Books, 2027) is her latest project.
Heather Green is the author of the collection No Other Rome (Akron Poetry Series, 2021), and the translator of Tristan Tzara's Noontimes Won (Octopus Books, 2018) and Guide to the Heart Rail (Goodmorning Menagerie, 2017). Her poetry has appeared in Bennington Review, Denver Quarterly, the New Yorker, and elsewhere. Her translations of Tzara's work have appeared in Asymptote, Open Letters Monthly, and Poetry International. She teaches in the School of Art at George Mason University. Green was a reviewer for Harriet Books in 2022.
Sylvie Kandé is the author of three collections of poetry published by Gallimard. Lagon, lagunes. Tableau de Mémoire [Lagoons. Memory Board](2000) is postfaced by Edouard Glissant. La quête infinie de l’autre rive : épopée en trois chants (2011) received the 2017 Prix Lucienne Gracia-Vincent under the auspices of Fondation Saint John Perse and was published as Die Unendliche Suche nach dem Anderen Ufer by Matthes & Seitz (2021), and by Wesleyan U. Press as The Neverending Quest for the Other Shore. An Epic in Three Cantos (2022). Gestuaire (2016) received the 2017 Prix Louise Labé. It is anthologized as Stiller Tausch (Lyrik Kabinett by Hanser, 2023) and appeared in English as Gestuary (Seagull Books, 2026).
Kandé’s poetry appeared in various journals and anthologies, notably in Poésie du Louvre (Seghers) republished by the New York Review of Books (At the Louvre October 24). She is the recipient of a Golden Dozen teaching Award from NYU where she built the Francophone literature program, and a SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities. She was recently made The Léopold Sédar Senghor International Academy’s Faculty of Honor & Permanent Member.
SAARET E. YOSEPH is a writer and artist from Washington, DC, who blends poetry, documentary and narrative storytelling. Her work has been featured on CNN, HuffPost, Voice of America, The Root and The Ethiopian Reporter. She has received honors and funding support from the National Endowment for the Arts, HumanitiesDC and the Poetry Foundation, among others. Her visual docupoem, JOURNEY(S): addis to dc was awarded Best Experimental Film at the 2025 KITFO Film Festival in Los Angeles. She released her debut poetry chapbook, a beginner's guide to endings, in December 2025. Saaret's current project, ABYSSINIA & HARLEM, is a work of historical fiction. The short story collection is inspired by the true story of Dorothy Hadley Bayen, a Black woman from the Midwest who became an Ethiopian princess, against the backdrop of the Second Italo-Ethiopian War.
