Stay This Day and Night with Me (City Lights Books, 2023,) the English translation by LAIS’s Mark Schafer of the novel by the Spanish author Belén Gopegui, has been shortlisted for the Spain-USA Foundation Translation Award (SUFTA). Inaugurated in 2022, the SUFTA prize is offered by the American Literary Translators Association in conjunction with the Spain-USA Foundation. The award recognizes translations into English of literary prose works written originally by authors of Spanish (Spain) nationality.
Since January, I’ve been on an unpaid leave, working full time as I finally fulfill a 35-year-old dream. In my senior year of college, I began translating fiction by the Cuban author Virgilio Piñera (1912–1979) from Spanish into English. Cold Tales, my collection of 43 of Piñera’s stories, was published in 1988 and René’s Flesh, my translation of his most famous novel was published the following year. However, both books have been out of print for over two decades and are quite hard to find.
This past fall, I was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Translation Fellowship to translate 23 additional stories by Piñera. In addition, the literary publisher New York Review Books committed to publish my revised and expanded edition of Cold Tales, containing a total of 66 stories, and my revision of René’s Flesh. Here’s “Belisario,” one of the additional stories to be included in the new Cold Tales. And here are two pages of my revision of Piñera’s novel:
This past March, thanks to the support of the CLA Dean’s Professional Development Fund, I was able to travel to Havana for the first time in 35 years, this time accompanied by Piñera’s grandniece, María Victoria Rubio. During this six-day trip, I met with various Cuban authors and critics who work on Piñera’s writing, including the theater director Norge Espinosa and the essayist and professor Víctor Fowler Calzada.
Mark Schafer with Norge Espinosa and María Victoria Rubio
And, thanks to Piñera’s grandniece, I got full access to Piñera’s papers in the National Library in Havana.
Mark and María Victoria, looking through Virgilio Piñera’s papers at the Biblioteca Nacional in Havana, Cuba
And finally, between my trips to the library and meetings with Cuban authors, I was able to walk around the El Vedado neighborhood and La Habana Vieja (Old Havana) and take some local transportation. Here are a few shots of the city—faded, severely under resourced due to the 62-year-old U.S. embargo of Cuba, but still elegant:
On March 28, 2024, Dr. Froilán Ramos gave the lecture “Another way. President John Kennedy and the Alliance for Progress in Chile (1961-1970)” to students enrolled in the course Lat Am 101, “Latin American Society and Culture.” Dr. Ramos shared with LAIS’s students his current research about the Alliance for Progress in the archives of the JFK Presidential Library.
Dr. Froilán RamosDr. Froilán Ramos and LAIS students
On February 22, 2024, Casa Latina hosted the panel series “Latinos in Higher Education.” Professors María Cisterna Gold, Simone Harmath-de Lemos, and Nayelli Castro of the Department of Latin American and Iberian Studies were invited to present on their academic trajectories and the Latin American and Iberian Studies major at UMass Boston.
On April 11, 2024, the Latin American and Iberian Studies Department, in collaboration with the Department of Political Sciences, and UNAM Boston, hosted, Dr. Miguel Basáñez, former Mexico ambassador to the US. Dr. Basáñez’s lecture about his most recent book, Who Rules Mexico Today?, allowed UMass Boston students and faculty to learn more about contemporary history and politics in Mexico.
Photo: From left to right: Héctor Zavala (UNAM Boston), Prof. Luis Jiménez (UMass Boston, Department of Political Science, Dr. Miguel Basáñez, Prof. Jorge Capetillo (UMass Boston, Department of Sociology), Prof. Benjamín Juárez Echenique (UMass Boston, Department of Latin American & Iberian Studies).
We are delighted to share that the book “Cannibal Translation”, by Professor Isabel Gomez, was awarded the 2024 Harry Levin Prize for the best first book in comparative literature from the ACLA!!
