Links to online interviews with Bolaño translators & editors (updated)

Below are web links to profiles-interviews with Bolaño translators, editors, and publishers in English.

(updated Feb. 6, 2013)

CHRIS ANDREWS: Translator of, among others, By Night in Chile and Last Evenings on Earth.

"The Chris Andrews Interview", The Quarterly Conversation

"RTW 2007, E-Panel: Literary Translators", Emerging Writers Network, 18 July 2007

"Interview with Chris Andrews", The Mookse and the Gripes, 16 July 2009

"Found in translation", The Australian, 20 March 2010

"This Week in Fiction: Roberto Bolaño", The Book Bench (The New Yorker), 14 April 2010

"Chris Andrews", Bombsite, June 2012

"Out and About: A Panel Discussion with Bolaño Translators Chris Andrews and Natasha Wimmer", Now That It's Now, 15 November 2012

NATASHA WIMMER: Translator of, among others, The Savage Detectives and Between Parentheses.

"Nine Questions for Natasha Wimmer on The Third Reich by Roberto Bolaño", Conversational Reading

"Interview with Natasha Wimmer", hey small press!

"The Natasha Wimmer Interview", The Quarterly Conversation

"Questions for Translator Natasha Wimmer", The Savage Detectives Amazon page

"Stray Questions for: Natasha Wimmer", Paper Cuts, 21 December 2007

"Natasha Wimmer on Roberto Bolaño’s “2666”", Words Without Borders, 2008 [essay]

See also: "Roberto Bolaño and The Savage Detectives" [pdf, essay]

"Natasha Wimmer on Translating Bolaño’s 2666", Vulture, 14 November 2008

"Interview: Natasha Wimmer, Translator of Roberto Bolaño's 2666", Sound of the City (Village Voice), 25 November 2008

Excerpted in: "Lit Seen: Joshua Ferris at Housing Works, n+1, Bolaño's Hit Translator", Village Voice, 26 November 2008

"Exclusive: Natasha Wimmer Tells Us About Translating the Next Great Latin American Author", Flavorwire, 2 December 2008

"Conversation: Roberto Bolano's '2666'", PBS NewsHour [audio], 23 January 2009

"Natasha Wimmer on Roberto Bolaño and the Translator's Task", Powells.com, undated

"A translator's task – to disappear", Christian Science Monitor, 16 January 2009

"Natasha Wimmer", Publishers Weekly, 12 June 2009

"Natasha Wimmer on Forthcoming Bolano Books", Center for the Art of Translation Blog, 21 September 2009

"TWO VOICES: Translator Natasha Wimmer in Conversation with Daniel Alarcón"

"Lit&Lunch with Translator Natasha Wimmer on Roberto Bolano" [audio], Center for the Art of Translation Blog, 10 October 2009

"Translating Sex", Granta (online only), 17 May 2010

"Editors' Week: Interview with Natasha Wimmer", Center for the Art of Translation Blog, 4 October 2010

"Translating Bolaño: An Interview with Natasha Wimmer", Sampsonia Way, 17 January 2013

LAURA HEALY: Translator of 3 poetry books by Bolaño: The Romantic Dogs, Tres, and The Unknown University.

"Interview with Laura Healy, translator of Roberto Bolaño’s “The Romantic Dogs”", Words Without Borders, 12 March 2010

ERICA MENA: Translator of the poems in Tres, an excerpt of which appeared in Words Without Borders.

"Making the Translator Visible: Erica Mena", Three Percent, 15 December 2009

See also.

PROFILES / INTERVIEWS WITH EDITORS AND PUBLISHERS

"A Writer Whose Posthumous Novel Crowns an Illustrious Career", NYTimes.com, 9 August 2005

"A Writer Crosses Over", The Washington Post, 8 April 2007

"Poets and Gangsters: Discovering Roberto Bolano", NPR, 28 April 2007

"Andrew Wylie Puts Roberto Bolaño On the Market", The New York Observer, 21 October 2008

"Editor Lorin Stein Discusses Roberto Bolano's '2666'" [audio], NPR, 27 January 2009

"Agents & Editors: A Q&A With Jonathan Galassi", Poets & Writers, 1 July 2009

"Chris Faatz Interviews Barbara Epler of New Directions", PowellsBooks.Blog, 5 September 2009

"Q&A with Lorin Stein", Las obras de Roberto Bolaño, 28 January 2010

"Interview – Lorin Stein on Literature", Notes from the Underground, 9 March 2010

"Roberto Bolaño: Literary Lion, Cash Cow?", The Q: GQ, 14 May 2010

"Barbara Epler" [audio], Bookworm on KCRW, 25 March 2010

"This Week in Fiction: The True Bolaño", The New Yorker, 16 January 2012

Epilogue for variations: Lisa

The poem is from the 2007 collection La universidad desconocida (The Unknown University) by Roberto Bolaño. The first translation is one of the set of five that appeared in The Paris Review. The translator is not credited, but I assume it's Laura Healy whose translation of the whole collection will be brought out by New Directions. The second is a version by Mariela Griffor and B. H. Boston which appeared three years ago in Poetry International.



When Lisa Told Me
Translated by Laura Healy

When Lisa told me she’d made love
to someone else, in that old Tepeyac warehouse
phone booth, I thought my world
was over. A tall, skinny guy with
long hair and a long cock who didn’t wait
more than one date to penetrate her deep.
It’s nothing serious, she said, but it’s
the best way to get you out of my life.
Parménides García Saldaña had long hair and
could have been Lisa’s lover, but some
years later I found out he’d died in a psych ward
or killed himself. Lisa didn’t want to
sleep with losers anymore. Sometimes I dream
of her and see her happy and cold in a Mexico
drawn by Lovecraft. We listened to music
(Canned Heat, one of Parménides García Saldaña’s
favorite bands) and then we made
love three times. First, he came inside me,
then he came in my mouth, and the third time, barely
a thread of water, a short fishing line, between my breasts. And all
in two hours, said Lisa. The worst two hours of my life,
I said from the other end of the phone.

* * *

Lisa
Translated by Mariela Griffor and B. H. Boston

When Lisa told me she had made love
with another, in the eternal telephone booth of life
in the market in Tepeyac, I thought the world
ended. A tall thin man with
long hair and a long cock, didn’t wait even
one night to penetrate her to the core.
It’s nothing serious, she said, but it
is the best way of getting you out of my life.
Parmenides Garcia Saldana had long hair and could
have been Lisa’s lover, but some
years later I saw he’d died in a mental hospital
or committed suicide. Lisa didn’t want
to lie any longer with losers. Sometimes I dream
of her and see her happy and cold in Mexico
designed by Lovecraft: We listen to music
(Canned Heat, one of Parmenides Garcia Saldana’s
favorite groups) and then we make
love three times. The first time he comes inside of me.
The second time inside my mouth, the third, hardly a thread
of water, a short fishing line, between my breasts. And all
of that in two hours, Lisa said. The two worst hours of my life,
I said from the other end of the line.

What happened in Philoctetes Center, December 2009?

The poetry reading was called "Madmen, Exiles, and Savage Detectives: Latin American Poetry from Arenas to Bolaño". The readers were Jaime Manrique and Laura Healy.

Healy will read from her translations of work by Mario Santiago Papasquiaro and Roberto Bolaño, cofounders of the poetic movement Infrarealism, which was immortalized in Bolaño's Savage Detectives. Like the fictional characters Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima, Bolaño and Papasquiaro tried to infuse their poetry with life as much as they infused their lives with poetry. The evening will serve as an introduction to the work of Latin American poets who spent their lives in the margins, whether by choice or as a matter of circumstance.

Words Without Borders had a review of the event here.

The entire reading was posted in YouTube.

P.S. This is Bifurcaria bifurcata's 101st post!

Yet another excerpt from Tres ...

... is online at The Threepenny Review. The excerpt is taken from the first poem in Tres, "Prose in Autumn in Gerona", in Laura Healy's translation.

http://www.threepennyreview.com/samples/bolano_f11.html



(Related posts)


P.S. Curious readers can read the whole Tres in another translation posted in Scribd.

A reading from Tres ...

... at this YouTube link. This was back in May during the Mass Poetry Festival in Salem. Laura Healy read excerpts from her translation of the first part of the poem.

Tres is available this month from New Directions.


See our Tres-related posts here.