August is Women in Translation Month! So for Mixtape #7, we asked critics, scholars, and translators: what are some of your favorite works written and/or translated by women? Here are some of their recommendations. We hope you would check out a few of these and celebrate women in translation!
Kasia Bartoszynska – critic, editor, translator, and associate professor at Ithaca College: This one might be a little harder to find but it’s worth it — O, by Judith Kiros, translated by Kira Josefsson, is an avant-garde engagement with Othello by a Black Swedish poet, and a marvelous feat of translation. On the more readily available front, Open Letter Books has a 40% off sale for WiTMonth, which is an incredible bargain. Two of my favorites are Garden by the Sea, by Mercè Rodoreda and translated by Maruxa Relaño and Martha Tennent, a lovely and deliciously melancholic summer book, and Elisa Shua Dusapin’s Winter in Sokcho, translated by Aneesa Abbas Higgins, which is perfect if you’re sick of the muggy heat and want something cool and spiky. Meanwhile, I also just finished Sister Deborah by Scholastique Mukosonga, translated by Mark Polizotti, which is awesome — can’t wait to read more of her books.
Sheri-Marie Harrison – scholar, editor, and associate professor at the University of Missouri: Little Eyes by Samanta Schweblin. In this book’s dystopian world people buy robotic pets that allow remote users to view their lives through the eyes of the pets in real time. What unfolds is a web of interconnected stories about privacy, voyeurism, and the ethical dilemmas of technology, each one exploring the impact of these devices on human relationships from a slightly different angle. The book highlights how technology, for all its promises of intimacy and connection, can just as easily deepen isolation and blur the lines between closeness and intrusion. That tension—between wanting to be seen and the terror of being watched—is what gives these stories their power. What makes it all the more striking for me is the translation, which renders the prose with a clarity that makes the ordinary feel uncanny, ratcheting the unease until it becomes bone chilling. The horror horrors in this one, especially in the final culminating story.
Bhakti Shringarpure – writer, editor, scholar: Edo’s Souls by Stella Gaitano is a vital read if you want to understand contemporary Sudan. Gaitano writes in Arabic and grew up in Sudan and her citizenship was revoked when South Sudan was formed so she embodies and writes about this long conflict. Edo’s Souls is epic in scope and translator Sawad Hussain has done an incredible job of capturing the tonal shifts, the rather twisty plot that blends the real and the ghostly, and very particular and local metaphors. I would also recommend Minor Detail by Adania Shibli, which is a terrifying and mindbending novel. It runs at less than a 100 pages long but it is densely packed and claustrophobic as we simultaneously dread the fate of the young Palestinian girl and the Palestinian researcher who seeks the girl in the archive. Elisabeth Jaquette’s translation is masterful so much so that I did not even realize I was not reading in the original language.
Kelsi Vanada – poet, translator, and Senior Program Director of the American Literary Translators Association: and when the light comes it will be so fantastic by Kristin Berget, translated from Norwegian by Kathleen Maris Paltrineri (Northwestern University Press, 2025). Berget’s brief poems are powerful and haunting in Paltrineri’s superb translation. These poems convey concern about climate disaster by digging deep into human emotion. Paltrineri’s translator’s note is a real masterclass in translating poetry. Much of her work was done in Los Angeles near the devastating recent fires, adding to her already-deep connection with the work. “This landscape snares us,” the first poem begins, “with its long stalks.” The Hunger of Women by Marosia Castaldi, translated from Italian by Jamie Richards is by far the book I have recommended most to others in the last year. It’s incredible. A middle-aged Italian woman who lives alone turns her home into a restaurant. Her descriptions (recipes, really) of the food she makes and the people who eat it are mouthwatering, decadent, sensual. Even better is watching her come alive to her love of women, and to her own life. It’s written without periods, a form I learned to love. String Theory by Karen Villeda, translated from Spanish (Mexico) by NAFTA (The North American Free Translation Agreement/No America Fraught Translation Argument) and published by Cardboard House Press in 2025 isa long poem written in many forms, referencing the poet’s aunt’s death by hanging. Whether a suicide or a femicide, it is a death shrouded in mystery. The translators handle the intentional ambiguities in the poem—and the palpable loss and grief—brilliantly. I reviewed the book for Full Stop if you’d like to read more thoughts.
MTC Mixtapes: asks our editors, writers, and readers to share their responses to a particular question about something they’re loving, hating, fascinated by, or curious about right now.
Article photo: an illustration from J. J. Grandville’s Un Autre Monde (1844) via Public Domain Review