New Zealand Centre for Literary Translation Executive Committee

Meet the members of the New Zealand Centre for Literary Translation's Executive Committee.

Jean Anderson

Jean Anderson was the founding Director of NZCLT. She first became interested in literary translation in 2004 through her work with French writers in residence in the Randell Cottage. In 2005-2006 she contributed as a co-translator to New Zealand's presence at the Belles étrangères festival in France. She has since brought out eleven book-length fiction translations or co-translations with New Zealand, French, and American publishers, including some children's books for Gecko Press, and over 100 short pieces for anthologies and reviews in New Zealand, France, Fiji and the USA. Current projects include co-translating Patricia Grace's Chappy into French, and assisting with revisions to the translation of a book by leading Tahitian indigenous writer, Chantal Spitz. She has also published articles and book chapters on translating Anglophone and Francophone Pacific literature.

To view a list of publications visit Jean's staff profile page.

Stephen Epstein

Stephen Epstein is Director of the Asian Studies Programme at Victoria University of Wellington and a member of the NZCLT Executive Committee. His areas of research interest are contemporary Korean society, literature and popular culture. He also has translated numerous short stories from Korean and Indonesian into English. His novel translations include Contradictions, by Yang Gui-ja, (co-translation with Kim Mi Young; Cornell East Asia Series, 2005), Who Ate Up All the Shinga? by Park Wan-suh (co-translation with Yu Young-nan; Columbia University Press, 2009); The Long Road by Kim In-suk (MerwinAsia; 2010) and Telegram by Putu Wijaya (Lontar Foundation, 2011). He recently contributed the English language portion to the trilingual edition The Spinner of Darkness and Other Tales by Intan Paramaditha (Lontar Foundation, 2015). He is a former first prize winner in The Korea Times annual translation contest in the short story category.

To view a list of publications visit Stephen's staff profile page.

Nicola Gilmour

Nicola Gilmour is the Head of School for the School of Languages and Cultures, and a Senior Lecturer in Spanish at Victoria University of Wellington. She obtained her doctorate at the University of Auckland in New Zealand in 2001. In 2006 she published a monograph on narrative transvestism: Transvestite Narratives in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Hispanic Authors: Using the Voice of the Opposite Gender. Her current research is related to the deployment of images of the historical religious minorities of fifteenth-century Spain in contemporary Spanish literature between 1992 and 2007. Her interest in translation is a relatively recent one, focussed largely on the challenging short stories of Spanish writer Hipólito G. Navarro.

To view a list of publications visit Nicola's staff profile page.

Luo Hui

Luo Hui is a Lecturer in the Chinese Programme and became Director of the NZCLT in 2016 after four years directing the Confucius Institute at Victoria University of Wellington. His research approaches Chinese literary, film and visual cultures from a translational perspective, with particular attention to cross-cultural textual transmission. He is equally interested in the interrelations between literary translation and other creative disciplines. A prolific translator of modern Chinese poetry, Luo Hui has published work in major literary journals and anthologies in Asia and North America.

To view a list of publications visit Luo Hui's staff profile page.

Carolina Miranda

Carolina Miranda joined the University in 2007, after completing a PhD in Translation and Drama in Hull, UK, where she also taught for 6 years. Her research interests combine translation studies, twentieth-century Latin American literature and culture. In her monograph (2013), she combined these disciplines offering an innovative approach to the works of Argentinean writer Roberto Arlt (1900-1942). Here, she presents him as a kind of literary and cultural translator particularly investigating his less-studied theatre and short fiction production. Also central to her research is the study of the popular genre of crime fiction cultivated by other Hispanic authors as well as New Zealand writers. She has published various pieces on Roberto Arlt’s theatre and narrative work, and also on Argentinean, Spanish and New Zealand crime fiction.

To view a list of publications visit Carolina's staff profile page.

Simon Perris

Simon Perris is a Senior Lecturer in the Classics Programme, where he teaches ancient Greek and Latin languages and literature. His research interests span Greek tragedy, especially Euripides; classical translation; modern performances of ancient drama; and the classical tradition, especially in New Zealand. Among numerous publications on these subjects, he has recently completed The Gentle, Jealous God: Reading Euripides’ Bacchae in English (Bloomsbury, forthcoming 2016). He has also translated Sophokles’ Antigone (2014) and Euripides’ Bakkhai (2015) for the Victoria Ancient Theatre Society (VATS) annual performance.

To view a list of publications visit Simon's staff profile page.

Chris Price

Chris is a past editor of Landfall, has worked in publishing, and was for many years coordinator of the New Zealand International Arts Festival's Writers and Readers Week.

Chris holds an MA in Languages and Literature from Auckland University and an MA in Creative Writing from Victoria University of Wellington. Her first book of poems, Husk, was published by Auckland University Press (AUP) in 2002 and won the Montana Best First Book of Poetry award.

Her second book, Brief Lives (AUP, 2006) inhabits a territory where fiction, biography, prose poetry and essay meet and overlap. It was shortlisted in the biography category of the 2007 Montana New Zealand Book Awards. In 2008 Chris Price was Auckland University Writer in Residence at the Michael King Writers' Centre, and in 2009 she published another poetry collection, The Blind Singer (AUP).

Chris was awarded the 2011 New Zealand Post Mansfield Prize, and travelled to Menton, France to work at the Villa Isola Bella, where Katherine Mansfield lived and wrote in 1919 and 1920. In 2012 she took part in the Transit of Venus Poetry Exchange, in which three German and three New Zealand poets wrote about the experience of viewing the Transit from Tolaga Bay on New Zealand's East Coast, then translated each others' work at Berlin's literaturwerkstatt in October, before presenting it at the Frankfurt Book Fair as part of New Zealand's 2012 Guest of Honour programme. Transit of Venus / Venustransitwas published by Te Herenga Waka University Press in February 2016.

In 2015 she was awarded a residency at the Château Lavigny, Switzerland. A new collection, Beside Herself, was published by AUP in March 2016.

For more information visit Chris's staff profile page.

Sydney Shep

Wai-te-ata Press: Te Whare Tā o Wai-te-ata is directed by The Printer, Dr Sydney J Shep, Reader in Book History. Sydney specialises in a variety of book history and print culture research projects, including the history of paper and papermaking in nineteenth-century New Zealand, edible typography and street graffiti, Wellington's book trade history, diasporic print cultures and transnational book history. In 2014, she was awarded a Marsden Fund grant (her third) to study William Colenso and the Victorian Republic of Letters, with a focus on personal geographies and global networks. Sydney is also a practising letterpress printer, exhibiting book artist, and designer bookbinder who undertakes creative research commissions at Wai-te-ata Press.

For more information visit Sydney's staff profile page.

Sally-Ann Spencer

Sally-Ann Spencer is a literary translator and translation researcher. She is currently writing a book about contemporary German-English translation to be published next year. Her translations range from children’s literature to thrillers, fantasy novels and literary fiction. She completed her PhD in Literary Translation Studies at Victoria University of Wellington.