Register via the PEN World Voices Festival website.

The Translation Slam puts different translations of the same text side by side and invites the translators, authors, and audience members to join in a lively critical debate of how each version meets its creative challenges. New texts, previously untranslated into English will be provided by authors Kevin Chen (Ghost Town) and Maria Fernanda Ampuero (Human Sacrifices). Translating Ampuero’s work from Spanish will be Samantha Schnee and D.P. Snyder. Translating Chen’s work from Chinese are Stacy Mosher and Lin King. Translations will vie for audience approval and the event will end with a brief Q&A. Hosting the Slam will be PEN America Translation Committee Co-Chair, Annelise Finegan.

About HUMAN SACRIFICES:

An undocumented woman answers a job posting only to find herself held hostage, a group of outcasts obsess over boys drowned while surfing, and an unhappy couple finds themselves trapped in a terrifying maze. With scalpel-like precision, Ampuero considers the price paid by those on the margins so that the elite might lounge comfortably, considering themselves safe in their homes.

Simultaneously terrifying and exquisite, Human Sacrifices is “tropical gothic” at its finest—decay and oppression underlie our humid and hostile world, where working-class women and children are consistently the weakest links in a capitalist economy. Against this backdrop of corrosion and rot, these twelve stories contemplate the nature of exploitation and abuse, illuminating the realities of those society consumes for its own pitiless ends.