This panel discusses the expanding role technology plays in book publishing on the whole and publishing literary translations per se. Featuring Jeff Waxman and Henry L. Carrigan, Jr. Moderation by Chad W. Post. The concluding remarks are by Rainer Schulte and offer his prognosis for the future of literary translation in the United States.

Jeff Waxman is a bookseller with the Seminary Co-op Bookstores in Chicago and the editor of their web magazine, The Front Table. An active blogger at The Constant Conversation and reviewer of literature in translation, he is also a panelist for the Best Translated Book Award. Chad W. Post is the director of Open Letter Books at the University of Rochester, a relatively young press publishing only literature in translation. He is also the managing director of the Three Percent website, which is one of the best online resources for information about international literature and the business of publishing. Three Percent is also home to the Translation Database (which tracks the publication of all original translation of fiction and poetry released in the U.S.), the Reading the World podcast series, and the Best Translated Book Award. Prior to starting Open Letter and Three Percent, Chad was the associate director at Dalkey Archive Press.

Henry L. Carrigan, Jr. is Assistant Director and Senior Editor at Northwestern University Press. Before coming to Northwestern, he was North American Publisher at Continuum International Publishing. Henry writes about books for a number of national newspapers and magazines, and he has written about Gunter Grass, Hermann Hesse, Heinrich von Kleist, Robert Musil, Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka, W.G. Sebald, and Robert Walser for Magill’s Literary Survey. He is working now on an article on Camus and Sebald for Salem Press, will be reading a paper on Walser’s The Tanners at the upcoming German Studies Association conference.

Dennis Loy Johnson is the founder of the legendary MobyLives, one of the first book blogs. He is also the co-founder and publisher of Melville House, named by the Association of American Publishers as the best small press of 2007, and by the Village Voice as the best small press of 2009. Johnson’s own short fiction has been awarded a Pushcart Prize and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and he is the author of the book The Big Chill: The Great, Unreported Story of the Bush Inaugural Protests.

Professor Rainer Schulte is the Director of The Center for Translation Studies and the founder and editor of Translation Review at The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD). He is a translator, poet, playwright, and critic. In 1978 he co-founded the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA), whose national office is located at The Center for Translation Studies at UTD. One of his major contributions is the development of translation workshops. He has translated fiction, poetry, and essays from German, French, Spanish, and Italian., published four books of poems and several critical books on the art and craft of literary translation. Professor Schulte is a specialist in contemporary international literature and interdisciplinary studies in the arts and humanities. He has translated works by Ivan Goll, Georg Britting, Pierre Reverdy, Jules Supervielle, Karl Krolow, Angel Gonzalez, Roberto Juarroz , Gottfried Benn, Heinrich Böll, Luis Garcia Morales, Claude Esteban, and Juan Liscano.

Recorded Tuesday, June 22, 2010 at Goethe-Institut Chicago.