![quarkxpress 2018 feather a photo quarkxpress 2018 feather a photo](https://i.pinimg.com/236x/a4/7c/c0/a47cc095209b6df2e8d59d114a5c9867.jpg)
In all areas of my life I strive to keep trying new things and when I received Kendall’s invitation to translate the text I was immediately curious. How did you go about translating Feather? I’ll admit to being surprised to see you leap from writing and translating in a more adult world to working on a picture book, a genre more usually associated with younger readers. Working on it was such a pleasure, and I would love to do more. Kendall sent me a copy of the original book and I fell in love with it immediately. I had of course been a fan of Archipelago for years and am so excited to be a part of their brand new imprint of children’s literature in translation, Elsewhere Editions. Serendipitously, this project came to me by invitation through Archipelago editor, Kendall Story. How did you come to translate the picture book Feather by Cao Wenxuan and Roger Mello? Finally, I have a few possible projects in the works now, but nothing definite so I am thinking a lot about a new translation project! I also occasionally teach or give workshops on poetry and literary translation. We have an online column, Omniglots, for example where each month we feature a new project in translation. Currently I am the managing editor at Harvard Review where I do try to do what I can to help include and support other literary translators.
![quarkxpress 2018 feather a photo quarkxpress 2018 feather a photo](https://noahstrycker.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/BioPagePhoto-2-1500x541.jpg)
Over the past several years, I’ve published one book of translations of Li Shangyin’s work ( Derangements of My Contemporaries, New Directions, 2014) and have another coming out this summer ( The Selected Poetry of Li Shangyin, NYRB). After graduate school, I was a contract translator for an academic publisher for a few years and then slowly started exclusively working on literary translation. I started researching and working on the poetry of Li Shangyin while I was there. I began studying Chinese in college, continued my studies in Beijing and had the good fortune of getting my MFA at the University of Oregon where they allowed me to focus on translation alongside my own poetry. Translation feels like a way to connect and be of service even if the author I am working with is no longer alive. I see translation as a necessary complement to my writing, which is very insular and solitary. So doing both has been a natural evolution. I have always been interested in languages, having grown up between English and Spanish in my own family, and all of my very favorite writers were and are also translators. It’s really a pleasure to connect with a translator working on a different facet of Cao’s work.Ībout myself, I am a poet and a translator. Thank you Helen for the invitation, I am in the middle of reading your beautiful translation of Cao’s Bronze and Sunflower and just loving it. Thank you for agreeing to this interview, Chloe! Please tell us about yourself! Feather 羽毛written by Cao Wenxuan and illustrated by Roger Mello.