Creative Writing M.F.A. Student Awarded Prestigious Grant for Literary Translation Project

Joaquín Gavilano

The U of A Program in Creative Writing and Translation in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences is excited to announce that second-year M.F.A. student in literary translation Joaquín Gavilano has been awarded a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant by PEN America.

The award is intended to “promote the publication and reception of translated international literature in English.” Gavilano’s winning project is a translation of The Hostage by Gabriel Mamani Magne from the Spanish.

The award is judged by the Fund’s Advisory Board, who noted, “In Gabriel Mamani Magne’s The Hostage, a father who needs to cover damages after a barfight over a woman decides to extort money from his ex-wife by faking their sons’ kidnapping. The narrator, just entering adolescence, is used to ‘not asking,’ since the truth is dangerous. But he starts questioning attitudes towards sex, gender and violence in the world around him during his few days of paradoxical freedom hiding at the edge of La Paz with his younger brother. Joaquín Gavilano’s translation captures the energy and humor of this magical, heartbreaking story — where the ridiculous is all too real — from a writer who represents Bolivian literature’s new wave.”

Since it’s establishment 16 years ago, the PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant has awarded up to 4,000 to nearly 200 works in translation in dozens of languages, including Armenian, Basque, Estonian, Farsi, Finland-Swedish, Lithuanian and Mongolian, French, Spanish, German, Russian, Chinese, Japanese and Arabic.

Founded in 1966, the U of A Program in Creative Writing and Translation in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences consistently ranks in the top 40 M.F.A. programs nationwide, according to Poets & Writers magazine. The Atlantic Monthly named the U of A among the “Top Five Most Innovative” M.F.A. programs in the nation. Noteworthy graduates include Barry Hannah, C.D. Wright, Lucinda Roy and Nic Pizzolatto.