Award-Winning Readings: National Book Award Nominees and Winner in Translated Literature

Becka Mara McKay directs the Creative Writing MFA at Florida Atlantic University. Publications include poetry: A Meteorologist in the Promised Land (Shearsman, 2010) and Happiness Is the New Bedtime (Slash Pine Press, 2016) and three translations of Israeli fiction: Laundry (Autumn Hill, 2008), Blue Has No South (Clockroot, 2010), and Lunar Savings Time (Clockroot, 2011). Recent work has appeared in Bennington Review, Copper Nickel, Forklift Ohio, Ninth Letter, Ploughshares, Post Road, and River Styx. Her newest book of poems, The Little Book of No Consolation, is forthcoming from Barrow Street Press.

Diane Grosklaus Whitty specializes in nonfiction in the fields of the social sciences, history, and public health. Her major book translations include The Collector of Leftover Souls by Eliane Brum; Activist Biology by Regina Horta Duarte; and Zika: From the Brazilian Backlands to Global Threat by Debora Diniz. She has also translated prose and poetry by Adriana Lisboa, Marina Colasanti, and Mário Quintana, among others. Her translations have appeared in The Guardian, The Lancet, History Today, and Litro.  Her work on The Collector of Leftover Souls (Graywolf Press) by award-winning journalist Eliane Brum was nominated for the National Book Award in Translation. The Collector of Leftover Souls chronicles the lives of everyday Brazilians, from the practice of indigenous midwives in the Amazon, to life and death in São Paulo’s favelas and the boom and bust of modern-day gold rushers. It is a vital work of investigative journalism.