Annual Literary Translation Forum

Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp is a literary translator working from German, Russian and Arabic into English, whose work has been shortlisted for the Helen & Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize, the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize and the GLLI Translated YA Prize. She translates novels, nonfiction and children’s books and her published translations include books from Germany, Jordan, Morocco, Palestine, Russia, Switzerland and Syria.    

Gioia Guerzoni was born near Milan but lives in Greece. She has been translating for more than twenty-five years, mainly from English into Italian for big and small publishers. Among her authors are Teju Cole, Jenny Offill, Siri Hustvedt, Debora Levy, and Sulaiman Addonia. She has edited an anthology of Indian authors and various other publications and is now curating a series on African literature. Hunting for books to translate and working on publishing projects with other people are her favorite pastimes.

Barbara Ofosu-Somuah is an educational equity researcher, writer, and emerging Italian-to-English translator, from Accra, Ghana, and the Bronx, New York. As a translator, she attempts to bring the works of contemporary Afro-Italian writers to English-speaking audiences. She has received both Thomas J. Watson and Fulbright research fellowships to investigate the racialized lived experiences of Black people, primarily womxn, across the African diaspora. During her Fulbright year, collaborated with various Black Italian organizations/collectives as they unpacked the reality of concurrently embodying Blackness and Italianness in a culture that perceives both identities as incompatible. Ofosu-Somuah has a bachelor of arts in sociology, psychology, and Italian, from Middlebury College. 

Alta L. Price runs a publishing consultancy specialized in literature and nonfiction texts on art, architecture, design, and culture. A recipient of the Gutekunst Prize, she translates from publishing consultancy Italian and German into English. Her work has appeared on BBC Radio 4, Words Without Borders, and elsewhere. Her latest publications include books by Anna Goldenberg and Alexander Kluge, her translation of Juli Zeh’s novel New Year is forthcoming from World Editions later this year, and her translation of Giorgio Agamben’s book La follia di Hölderlin is forthcoming from Seagull Books next year. 

Candice Whitney is a researcher, writer, and international education professional, based in New Jersey. In 2016–17, as a Fulbright Scholar, she conducted research that explored how the diversity of African women’s entrepreneurial projects interrogates and challenges stereotypes about the African diaspora in Italy. She’s also the cocurator and cohost of the webinar series Virtual Salons: Discourses on Black Italia at NYU’s Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò. Whitney received her bachelor of arts in anthropology and Italian, from Mount Holyoke College.