Join the Office Hours Community for a Craft Class and Reading with Laura Esther Wolfson!

Translating a Poem, Translating the World
No foreign language knowledge required. All levels welcome.

In this course, we will look at multiple English translations of an eight-line Russian poem, Я вас любил (“I Loved You”), by Alexander Pushkin, as a jumping-off point to ponder how slight shifts in word choice and emphasis change how the reader perceives a piece of writing and how all writing is a form of translation—of the world. No foreign language knowledge required. All levels welcome.

The course will also include freewheeling excursions into two of Laura’s adjacent obsessions: Russian literature and literary translation.

Suggested donation is $10 (but not required). All donations go directly to the course instructor. Writers of all backgrounds welcome. You can make a donation when you register on Eventbrite.

Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to receive the Zoom link on the morning of Thursday, June 17th.

Click here to register

Laura Esther Wolfson‘s debut essay collection, FOR SINGLE MOTHERS WORKING AS TRAIN CONDUCTORS, was awarded the 2017 Iowa Prize for Literary Nonfiction and published by the University of Iowa Press in 2018. She is currently working on her second book, entitled SUPER-PRICEY ROYAL BLUE FRENCH LACE BRA.

Her writing has been honored with the 2017 Notting Hill Essay Prize,

published in leading literary venues on both sides of the Atlantic, and cited in The Best American Essays. She is a Fellow at MacDowell (2018) and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (2017). She holds an MFA from the New School and lives in New York City.

She served for many years as the interpreter for Russian-speaking authors at the PEN World Voices Festival and as a PEN prison writing mentor. She has had a long career as an interpreter and translator, working from Russian, French and Spanish to English. Laura translated Stalin’s Secret Pogrom (Yale University Press, 2001), on the events leading up to the Night of the Murdered Poets. The book went on to win the National Jewish Book Award for Eastern European history. https://lauraestherwolfson.com/