Esther Allen

{{Short description|American writer (born 1962)}} {{Use American English|date=January 2022}} {{Use mdy dates|date=January 2022}} {{For|the American psychologist|Esther Allen Gaw}} {{Infobox writer | name = Esther Allen | embed = | honorific_prefix = | honorific_suffix = | image = Esther Allen on HowlRound.jpg | image_size = | image_upright = | alt = | caption = Allen in 2020 | native_name = | native_name_lang = | pseudonym = | birth_name = | birth_date = {{Birth date and age|1962|6|29}} | birth_place = | death_date =  | death_place = | resting_place = | occupation = Writer, translator | language = | residence = | nationality = American | citizenship = | education = | alma_mater = | period = | genre =  | subject =  | movement = | notableworks =  | spouse =  | partner =  | children = | relatives = | awards = | signature = | signature_alt = | years_active = | module = | website =  | portaldisp =  }} '''Esther Allen''' (born June 29, 1962) is a writer, professor, and translator of French-language and Spanish-language literature into English. She is on the faculties of Baruch College (Department of Modern Languages & Comparative Literature) and the Graduate Center, CUNY (Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Ph.D. Program; French Ph.D. Program).<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/wsas/academics/modern_languages/eallen.htm|title=Esther Allen - Department of Modern Languages and Comparative Literature - Weissman School of Arts and Sciences - Baruch College|website=Baruch.cuny.edu|access-date=5 November 2017}}</ref> Allen co-founded PEN World Voices: the New York Festival of International Literature (2004), and worked with PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grants from their inception in 2003 to 2010. Allen heads the Development Committee of the American Literary Translators Association,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.literarytranslators.org/about/governance/committees|title=Standing Committees - The American Literary Translators Association|website=Literarytranslators.org|access-date=5 November 2017}}</ref> and serves on the board of Writers Omi, part of Omi International Arts Center, on the Advisory Council to the Spanish-language program at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, and on the Selection Committee for the French Voices translation subvention program of the Services culturels français.

==Selected works== ===Selected translations=== * ''Zama'', introduction and first English-language translation of 1956 Spanish-language novel by Antonio di Benedetto. {{cite book |translator-last=Allen |translator-first=Esther |last=Di Benedetto |first=Antonio |title=Zama |date=August 23, 2016 |url=http://estherallen.com/projects/zama/ |location=New York City |publication-date=2016 |publisher=New York Review Books |isbn=9781590177174 }} <ref>{{cite news|quote = ''Zama'' remains the most attractive of Di Benedetto’s books, if only because of the crazy energy of Zama himself, which is vividly conveyed in Esther Allen’s excellent translation." |url=http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/01/19/antonio-di-benedetto-great-writer/|title=A Great Writer We Should Know|first=J. M.|last=Coetzee|date=5 November 2017|access-date=5 November 2017|website=Nybooks.com}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/23/a-neglected-south-american-masterpiece|title=A Neglected South American Masterpiece|first=Benjamin|last=Kunkel|date=16 January 2017|access-date=5 November 2017|website=Newyorker.com |quote= The belated arrival of ''Zama'' in the United States raises an admittedly hyperbolic question: Can it be that the Great American Novel was written by an Argentinean? It’s hard, anyway, to think of a superior novel about the bloody life of the frontier.}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|url = https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n07/michael-wood/vileness|author =Michael Wood|title = Vileness|work = London Review of Books|date = 5 April 2018}}</ref> * José Martí's ''Selected Writings (Penguin Classics)'', editor and translator. {{cite book |title=Selected Writings (Penguin Classics) |date=April 30, 2002 |url=http://estherallen.com/projects/jose-marti-selected-writings/ |isbn=9780142437049 |publisher=Penguin Classics }} * ''Dancing with Cuba: A Memoir of the Revolution'', English-language translation of Spanish-language manuscript by Alma Guillermoprieto. {{cite book |title=Dancing with Cuba: A Memoir of the Revolution |year=2005 |url=http://estherallen.com/projects/dancing-cuba-memoir-revolution/ |isbn=9780375725814 |publication-date=2005 |publisher=Vintage Books }} Guillermoprieto wrote in the book's Acknowledgements: Esther Allen "turned my stammering Spanish-language manuscript into an English text far more beautiful and assured than I could have written." * ''In Her Absence'', English-language translation of 2001 Spanish-language novel by Antonio Muñoz Molina. {{cite book |translator-last=Allen |translator-first=Esther |last=Muñoz Molina |first=Antonio |title=In Her Absence |date=July 17, 2007 |url=http://estherallen.com/projects/absence/ |location=New York City |publication-date=2007 |publisher=Other Press |isbn=9781590512531 }} Reviewer Michael Kern Johnson called the work "an assured translation from Esther Allen that captures beautifully the shifting subtleties of tone and mood... satirical, and even very funny ... touching and painful."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.wordswithoutborders.org/book-review/antonio-muoz-molinas-in-her-absence|title=Antonio Muñoz Molina's "In Her Absence" - Words Without Borders|first=Michael Kern|last=Johnson|website=Wordswithoutborders.rg|date=March 1, 2008|access-date=5 November 2017}}</ref> * ''Selected Non-Fictions (Penguin)'', English-language translation of Spanish-language works by Jorge Luis Borges. Edited by Eliot Weinberger and co-translated with Weinberger and Suzanne Jill Levine. {{cite book |title=Selected Non-Fictions |date=November 2000 |url=http://estherallen.com/projects/borges-selected-non-fictions/ |isbn=9780140290110 |publication-date=2000 |publisher=Penguin Classics }} * ''The Book of Lamentations (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin)'', English-language translation of 1962 Spanish-language novel by Rosario Castellanos. Translation originally published 1996 by Marsilio Publishers. {{cite book |title=The Book of Lamentations |date=August 1998 |url=http://estherallen.com/projects/book-lamentations/ |isbn=9780141180038 |publication-date=1998 |publisher=Penguin Classics }} * ''Dark Back of Time (Vintage International)'', English-language translation of Spanish-language novel by Javier Marías. Translation originally published 2001. {{cite book |title=Dark Back of Time |date=April 23, 2013 |url=http://estherallen.com/projects/dark-back-time/ |isbn= 9780307950741 |publication-date=2013 |publisher=Vintage Books }} * ''The Tale of the Rose: The Love Story Behind The Little Prince'', English-language translation of French-language memoir by Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry published post-humously in France in 2000. {{cite book |title=The Tale of the Rose: The Love Story Behind The Little Prince |date=January 14, 2003 |url=http://estherallen.com/projects/tale-rose-love-story-behind-little-prince/ |isbn= 9780812967173 |publication-date=2003 |publisher=Random House }}

===Selected other=== * Co-edited with Susan Bernofsky. {{cite book |last=Allen |first=Esther |date=2013 |title=In Translation: Translators on Their Work and What It Means |publisher=Columbia University Press |isbn=9780231159692 }} * Co-edited with Sean Cotter and Russell Scott Valentino. ''The Man Between: Michael Henry Heim and a Life in Translation'', co-editor and contributor. Tribute to Michael Henry Heim. {{cite book |title=The Man Between: Michael Henry Heim and a Life in Translation |year=2005 |url=http://estherallen.com/projects/man/ |isbn=9780375725814 |publication-date=2014 |publisher=Open Letter }} * ''Editor, To Be Translated or Not To Be'', published in English, Catalan and German and distributed at the 2007 Frankfurt Book Fair. Commissioned by PEN International and the Institut Ramon Llull.

== Awards and fellowships == * Fellow, Guggenheim Foundation, 2018.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.gf.org/fellows/all-fellows/esther-allen/|title=John Simon Guggenheim Foundation - Esther Allen}}</ref> * 2017 National Translation Award<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.literarytranslators.org/awards/national-translation-award|title=NTA (National Translation Award) - The American Literary Translators Association|website=Literarytranslators.org|access-date=5 November 2017}}</ref> of the American Literary Translators Association for English-language translation of ''Zama'', published by New York Review Books.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.nyrb.com/products/zama|title=Zama|website=New York Review Books|date=August 23, 2016 |access-date=5 November 2017}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.literarytranslators.org/awards/nta-winners|title=NTA Winners - The American Literary Translators Association|website=Literarytranslators.org|access-date=5 November 2017|archive-date=September 23, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170923221414/http://www.literarytranslators.org/awards/nta-winners|url-status=dead}}</ref> * Biography Fellow, Leon Levy Center for Biography, 2014–2015.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.gc.cuny.edu/Page-Elements/Academics-Research-Centers-Initiatives/Centers-and-Institutes/Leon-Levy-Center-for-Biography/Fellowships/Biography-Fellows/Former-Biography-Fellows|title=Former Biography Fellows|website=Gc.cuny.edu|access-date=5 November 2017}}</ref> * Awardee, Feliks Gross Awards,<ref>{{cite web|url=http://cunyufs.2015org/academy/FGAward.html|title=CUNY Academy for the Humanities and Sciences|website=cunyufs.org|access-date=5 November 2017|archive-date=October 27, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171027161215/http://cunyufs.org/academy/FGAward.html|url-status=dead}}</ref> City University of New York Academy for the Arts and Sciences, 2012. * Fellow, Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, 2009–2010.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.nypl.org/help/about-nypl/fellowships-institutes/center-for-scholars-and-writers/past-fellowships|title=Past Fellows 1999–2017|website=The New York Public Library|access-date=5 November 2017}}</ref> * Chevalier, Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, 2006. * Translation Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts, 1995 and 2010.

==References==

==External links== *[http://www.estherallen.com Esther Allen], official website. *[https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=09mzkTkAAAAJ&hl=en Esther Allen citations index] from ''Google Scholar'' *[http://www.nybooks.com/contributors/esther-allen/ Esther Allen article archive] from ''The New York Review of Books'' *[http://www.wordswithoutborders.org/contributor/esther-allen Esther Allen article archive] from ''Words Without Borders''

{{DEFAULTSORT:Allen, Esther}} Category:1962 births Category:Living people Category:Spanish–English translators Category:French–English translators Category:Baruch College faculty Category:CUNY Graduate Center faculty Category:Chevaliers of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres Category:American literary translators Category:20th-century American translators Category:21st-century American translators