In Conversation: Polly Barton and Monica Cure
In this wide-ranging conversation, Monica Cure (writer, scholar, and guest judge of the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize) joins award-winning translator and author Polly Barton to explore translation as a form of activism, resistance, and care. Drawing on their work across genres and languages, the speakers will reflect on the ethics of voice, the politics of representation, and the translator’s role in unsettling dominant narratives. This is a chance to hear two leading voices in contemporary translation thinking aloud about the possibilities, and responsibilities, of their craft.
Polly Barton is a Japanese translator and writer. Her translations include Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda, Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa, There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura, and Mild Vertigo by Mieko Kanai. Her translation of Asako Yuzuki’s Butter was named Waterstones Book of the Year 2024. She is the author of Fifty Sounds and Porn: An Oral History.
Monica Cure is a Romanian-American writer, poet, literary translator, and dialogue specialist. She is a two-time Fulbright grantee and the author of the book Picturing the Postcard: A New Media Crisis at the Turn of the Century (University of Minnesota Press). Her poems have appeared in journals such as Poetry Northwest, Salamander, and Graywolf Lab and her poetry translations have been published internationally in Kenyon Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, Asymptote, and elsewhere. She is the winner of the 2023 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize for her translation of Liliana Corobca’s novel, The Censor’s Notebook (Seven Stories Press UK). Her translation of Corobca’s novel Too Great a Sky was shortlisted for the 2025 EBRD Literature Prize. She is currently based in Bucharest.
Date:
14 June 2025, 15:30
Venue:
St Anne's College, Woodstock Road OX2 6HS
Venue Details:
Tsuzuki Lecture Theatre
Speakers:
Polly Barton,
Monica Cure
Organising department:
Faculty of English Language and Literature
Organiser:
OCCT
Organiser contact email address:
comparative.criticism@st-annes.ox.ac.uk
Host:
OCCT
Part of:
Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation
Booking required?:
Required
Booking url:
https://shorturl.at/RRHoM
Cost:
Free
Audience:
Public
Editor:
Mary Newman
