A Celebration of Silvina Ocampo

Celebration of Silvino Ocampo

Translators Suzanne Jill Levine, Katie Lateef-Jan, Jessica Powell

Chaucer’s Books is honored to celebrate the first English translation of the celebrated work of Silvina Ocampo, a collection of short stories entitled Forgotten Journey, and her novel, The Promise. We are very pleased to host Ocampo’s translators– Suzanne Jill Levine, Katie Lateef-Jan, and Jessica Powell.

Silvina Ocampo was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1903, and was a central figure in Argentine literary circles. Her accolades include Argentina’s National Poetry Prize, and a Guggenheim fellowship. She published thirteen volumes of fiction and poetry during a long and much-lauded career. She was an early contributor to Argentina’s Sur magazine and worked closely with its founder, her sister. Ocampo was married to writer, poet, essayist, Jorge Luis Borges.

“It is for the precise and terrible beauty of her sentences that this book should be read. A masterpiece of midcentury modernist literature triumphantly translated into our times.” –*Starred review, Kirkus, for Forgotten Journey

“Ocampo’s portrait of one woman’s interior life is forceful and full of hope.” *Starred Publisher’s Weekly review for The Promise

Suzanne Jill Levine is General Editor of Penguin’s paperback classics of Jorge Luis Borges’ poetry and essays, and a noted translator if Latin American prose and poetry by distinguished writers such as Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Julio Cortazar, Carlos Fuentes, Jose Donoso, Manuel Puig, Severo Sarduy and Adolfo Bioy Casares. Levine is the Director of Translation studies at UCSCB, and the author of several books.

Jessica Powell is the recipient of a 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship in support of her translation of Antonio Benitez Rojo’s novel, Woman in Battle Dress. Her translation of Wicked Weeds by Pedro Cabiya was named a finalist for the 2017 Best Translated Book award, and made the longlist for the 2017 National Translation Award.

Katie Lattef-Jan is a PhD candidate at UCSB in Comparative Literature, with a doctoral emphasis in Translation Studies. Her research focuses on twentieth-century Latin American literature, specifically Argentine fantastic fiction.