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Contributor

Lara Vergnaud

Portrait of Lara Vergnaud

Contributor

Lara Vergnaud

United States

Lara Vergnaud is a translator of prose, creative nonfiction, and scholarly works from the French. She is the recipient of two PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grants, a French Voices Grand Prize, and the French-American Foundation Translation Prize. Her translations include novels by Zahia Rahmani, Fatima Daas, Ahmed Bouanani, Mohamed Leftah, Franck Bouysse, and Joy Sorman.

Articles by Lara Vergnaud

Curved asphalt road on a foggy day in Lebanon

Photo by Dorsa Masghati on Unsplash

A Child’s Smile

After a dozen or so bombings, Jahid, like my mother had before him, decided we would flee.

Translated from French by Lara Vergnaud

Multilingual

Portraits of Tunisian author Yamen Manai, and translator Lara Vergnaud.

Yamen Manai, photo © Delphine Manai, and Lara Vergnaud, photo © Pascal Michel.

Guided by the Bees: Yamen Manai and Lara Vergnaud on Translating “The Ardent Swarm”

By Lara Vergnaud & Yamen Manai

Tunisia’s experience with despotism and revolution is universal.

Translating (in) Darkness

By Lara Vergnaud

How do we translate trauma? In this essay, Lara Vergnaud reflects on her experience translating scenes of graphic violence and abuse, and shares strategies that may be useful to other translators.I…

First Read—From “The Hospital”

By Ahmed Bouanani

Ahmed Bouanani’s The Hospital, translated from the French by Lara Vergnaud, is forthcoming from New Directions. Based on the author’s own experiences as a tuberculosis patient, the novel depicts…

Translated by Lara Vergnaud

On Translating Zahia Rahmani’s Invisible Tongues

By Lara Vergnaud

Lara Vergnaud’s translation of an excerpt from Zahia Rahmani’s “Muslim” appears in the August 2017 issue: The New French.Zahia Rahmani’s writing is a conversation—one-sided,…

from “Muslim: A Novel”

By Zahia Rahmani

I was the daughter of a tainted man.

Translated from French by Lara Vergnaud