Literary Translation
FDU is one of the only low-residency MFA programs in the country to offer a concentration in Literary Translation. In addition to working individually with acclaimed and award-winning faculty members, students have the opportunity to work with the editors of The Literary Review, the international literary magazine with a long history of publishing translations. Students may choose Literary Translation as a second concentration if they choose the three-year MFA option. Students concentrating in other genres have the option to choose Literary Translation for their one elective module.
Translation workshops are modeled on other creative workshops, and they incorporate translation theory (relative meaning, sonority, and historical and cultural context). Students of literary translation need a working knowledge of the language from which they wish to translate, but they may supplement that knowledge with dictionaries, interviews, and other sources.
FACULTY
Minna Proctor
Minna Proctor is the Editor of The Literary Review and teaches creative nonfiction and literary translation at Fairleigh Dickinson University. She is the author of Do You Hear What I Hear?, an investigation of the concept of religious calling. She translates from Italian and writes frequently about literature and photography. She is working on a collection of personal essays about conflict, dramatic structure, and resolution.
H.L. Hix
H. L. Hix’s recent books include First Fire, Then Birds: Obsessionals 1985-2010; a translation, made with the author, of Eugenijus Ališanka’s From Unwritten Histories; an essay collection, Lines of Inquiry; and an anthology, Made Priceless. Other recent poetry collections include Incident Light, Legible Heavens, and Chromatic (a finalist for the National Book Award). His books of criticism and theory include As Easy As Lying, Spirits Hovering Over the Ashes: Legacies of Postmodern Theory, and Morte d’Author: An Autopsy. He earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Texas, and taught for fifteen years at the Kansas City Art Institute. More information is available at his website: www.hlhix.com. Hix teaches poetry writing and literary translation in the MFA program.
Idra Novey
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Idra Novey is the author of the debut novel Ways to Disappear, winner of the 2016 Brooklyn Eagles Prize and a New York Times Editors’ Choice. Her most recent poetry collections Exit, Civilian was selected by Patricia Smith for the 2011 National Poetry Series. Her fiction and poetry have been translated into ten languages and she’s written for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, NPR’s All Things Considered, New York Magazine, and The Paris Review. She is the recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Poets & Writers Magazine, the PEN Translation Fund, the Poetry Foundation, and the Poetry Society of America. She’s also translated the work of several prominent Brazilian writers, most recently Clarice Lispector’s novel The Passion According to G.H. She has taught at Princeton University, Columbia University, New York University, Fordham University, the Catholic University of Chile, and in the Bard Prison Initiative. Novey teaches literary translation in the low-residency MFA program.
René Steinke, Director
MFA in Creative Writing Fairleigh Dickinson University
email: writingmfa@fdu.edu