International Writers Series: Anca Roncea

In this virtual reading and discussion, Anca Roncea, translator and Comparative Literature PhD student in the track for international writers, will discuss her translation from Romanian of Tribar by Andra Rotaru (Saturnalia Books, 2022). Roncea will be joined in discussion by Mary Jo Bang, poet, translator and Professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis.

The International Writers Series is a collaboration between the International Writers track of the Program in Comparative Literature and the University Libraries at Washington University to celebrate new publications of creative works by writers and translators in the Washington University in St. Louis community and beyond. The discussions are moderated by Matthias Goeritz, Professor of Practice of Comparative Literature.

Free and open to all, pre-registration required.

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Presenters

• Anca Roncea grew up in Romania, speaks Modern Greek, French, and writes in English. Through her work, Anca explores the space where language can create pivots in the midst of displacement, while incorporating the aesthetics of Constantin Brancusi and the female artists of the Dada Movement. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, which is the University of Iowa’s Literary Translation MFA program. Anca’s poetry has been published in the Berkeley Poetry Review, Beecher’s Magazine, Omniverse, the Bare Life Review, and Lana Turner. She is currently working on her first book of poetry, which is an experimental translation of Tristan Tzara’s Vingt-Cinq Poèmes focusing on the period of WWI Zurich Dada and the female artists of the Dada Movement.
• Mary Jo Bang is the author of eight books of poems—including A Doll for Throwing, Louise in Love, The Last Two Seconds, and Elegy, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award—and a translation of Dante’s Inferno, illustrated by Henrik Drescher. Her translation of Purgatorio was published by Graywolf Press in July of last year. She holds an MA degree in Sociology from Northwestern University, a BA in Photography from the Polytechnic of Central London (now Westminster University), and an MFA in Poetry from Columbia University. She has received a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Berlin Prize Fellowship. Her translation of Matthias Göritz’s poem, “Colonies of Paradise,” was awarded a Gulf Coast Translation Prize by Ilya Kaminsky. She and co-translator Yuki Tanaka were awarded the Denver Quarterly 2020 Cole Swensen Translation Prize for the poem “Open Letters to Mister Sun in the Laboratory,” by Shuzo Takiguchi, and the 2020 RHINO Translation Prize for the poem “LINES” by Shuzo Takiguchi. She is a Professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis where she teaches creative writing.