Words Without Borders invites you to a virtual multilingual reading and celebration of international poetry in translation, in partnership with the Academy of American Poets. Featuring Joshua Edwards, Lynn Xu, Yang Licai, Kareem James Abu-Zeid, Katrine Øgaard Jensen, Stine An, and Yoo Heekyung, whose poems were selected by judge Sawako Nakayasu as part of a special initiative between Words Without Borders and Poets.org’s Poem-a-Day series for National Translation Month 2024. We look forward to convening virtually with you and these fantastic translators and poets based around the world.
Tech and accessibility information
This event will be hosted on Zoom, which is available for download here. You’ll receive the link to the Zoom meeting the day of the event via email. Your display name should match the name you use to register for the event. You can change your Zoom display name by following these instructions.
In-app closed captioning and a full transcript will be available for this event. While in the meeting, you can toggle this on and off by clicking the “Live Transcription/CC” button at the bottom of your screen. You will not be able to turn on your own audio and video for this Zoom event. ASL interpretation is available upon request. Please email Anna at events@wordswithoutborders.org before Wednesday, January 15.
About the readers
Joshua Edwards is the author of several titles, including The Double Lamp of Solitude (Rising Tide Projects, 2022) and Castles and Islands (Liang Editions, 2016). Awarded the Akademie Schloss Solitude and Wallace Stegner Fellowships, Edwards lives in Paris.
Lynn Xu is the author of And Those Ashen Heaps That Cantilevered Vase of Moonlight (Wave Books, 2022) and Debts & Lessons (Omnidawn, 2013), which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She teaches at Columbia University and is an editor at Canarium Books. She lives between New York City and Marfa, Texas.
Yang Licai, born in Panjin, China, is a poet, sound artist, and activist. He is the author of Pee Poems (Circumference Books, 2022) and was awarded the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Fellowship. He lives in Beijing.
Kareem James Abu-Zeid is an award-winning translator of authors from across the Arab world. His most recent translation is the Palestinian poet Najwan Darwish’s No One Will Know You Tomorrow: Selected Poems 2014–2024 (Yale Margellos, Nov. 2024). He has received the Sarah Maguire Prize, PEN Center USA’s translation prize, Poetry Magazine’s translation prize, a Fulbright Fellowship, and an NEA translation grant, among other honors, and has twice been a finalist for the PEN America Translation Prize (once in poetry and once in prose). He lives in the countryside just outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Katrine Øgaard Jensen is the author of Ancient Algorithms (Sarabande Books, 2025), a collaborative book of poems with Baba Badji, CAConrad, Paul Cunningham, Aditi Machado, Sawako Nakayasu, and Ursula Andkjær Olsen. Øgaard Jensen’s translations include My Jewel Box (Action Books, 2022) by Andkjær Olsen. A recipient of several fellowships and awards, including the National Translation Award in Poetry, she lives in Kingston, New York.
Stine An (안수연) is a Korean American poet, literary translator, and performer based in Queens. Her work has appeared in Best Literary Translations 2024, Best American Experimental Writing 2018, Electric Literature, Black Warrior Review, World Literature Today, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. She holds a BA in Literature from Harvard College and an MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University and is the recipient of fellowships and grants from The Poetry Project, PEN/Heim Translation Fund, Yaddo, ALTA, Vermont Studio Center, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her translations include Today’s Morning Vocabulary by Yoo Heekyung (Zephyr Press, 2025) and Comet and Star: A Story of Cosmic Friendship, written by the musician and composer Lee Juck and illustrated by Lee Jinhee (Enchanted Lion Books, 2024). Her debut poetry collection, B-Dragon Suite, is a winner of the 2023 Nightboat Poetry Prize.
Yoo Heekyung is a South Korean poet, playwright, and essayist. He is the author of ten collections of poetry and prose, including Today’s Morning Vocabulary (Moonji Books, 2011), Somewhere in the World: Stories of a Poetry Bookshop (Dal Publishers, 2021), Winter Night Rabbit Worries (Hyundae Munhak, 2023), Poetry and Photography (Achimdal Books, 2024), and Oggi and I (Nanda, 2024). Yoo studied creative writing at the Seoul Institute of the Arts and playwriting at the Korea National University of Arts, and debuted as a poet in 2008 when his poem won the spring literary contest sponsored by the Chosun Ilbo. He is a playwright with the theater company dock and a member of the poetry collective jaknan. A recipient of the Hyundae Munhak Literary Award (2020) and the Gosan New Writer Award (2019), Yoo lives in Seoul, where he runs the poetry bookshop and project space wit n cynical.
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