Zoë Perry

Since I'm seeing a lot of talk about covers and what's on them: I love a good cover (maybe more than most!) But from my own experience, and the lived experience of many translators I know, wildly unethical practices can lurk behind a pretty cover, too. Good on the grid ≠ good labor practices

I get that it's become a kind of shorthand for respect, but just because a publisher puts a translator's name on the *front cover* (Fitzcarraldo does name translators on the back cover) doesn't mean they pay well/on time/negotiate in good faith/are honest/act like professionals (the list goes on).

Naming the translator is admirable, but worth remembering that it can also be used to hide myriad sins behind the scenes.

After you establish that niche, please write that Lexington narcotic farm novel.

WeTransfer just changed their TOS giving themselves permission to train AI on any content you transfer and produce derivative works based on content you transfer that they are allowed to monetize and you are not allowed payment for.

Stop using WeTransfer.

ALTA A L T A

New & emerging BIPOC lit translators! Apply for the Building Our Future 2-Day Virtual Workshop, meant to empower lit translators of color as they begin navigating the field. Led by poupeh missaghi & Sawad Hussain, w/ a business talk by Anni Liu. Free to participate! Apply by Monday:

It’s hot out and I would rather be by some body of water sipping this new pawpaw Ale-8 with @wrongsreversed.bsky.social

Writers! Note that AI translation (under the guise of "global access") is being seen/used as the weak point to get AI into publishing (possible bc Eng lang publishing is weak on translation). Stand with translators & for more human translation, fairly paid!

Every time someone writes a smug poorly-argued AI article like this, they’re simply demonstrating how swiftly AI has already transformed said writer’s critical thinking into a rotten log on the forest floor, studded with grubs and slime mold, gently disintegrating into humus even as we watch.

The Translator’s Voice — Jay Boss Rubin on Translating Euphrase Kezilahabi’s “Rosa Mistika” - Chicago Review of Books The Translator’s Voice is a column from editor Ian J. Battaglia, dedicated to global literature and the translators who work tirelessly and too often thanklessly to bring these books to the English-re...

It's pub day for Rosa Mistika—and here is a lengthy interview about the novel (and much else!) with @chicagorevbooks.bsky.social chireviewofbooks.com/2025/06/17/t...

When we negotiate fair terms for ourselves, we negotiate fair terms for all translators. Be wary of work-for-hire, and of working with editors/authors/agents who don't believe translators are part of a book's success.

Today's "we're all in this together" lesson: while negotiating a translation contract this morning, I was told they couldn't offer a royalty clause because the last time this author was translated, TEN years ago, the previous translator had only agreed to a a flat fee.

Get Edgar Wilson and Bronco Gil on the case.

An old man walking his cow through the Nottinghamshire countryside on rope during the early 1980s.

While researching my novel 1983, which is based on the Nottinghamshire mining village where I grew up, I had a weird memory of a man who used to take his cow for a walk around the village, like it was a dog.

"Have I made that up?" I wondered.

So I checked my mum and dad's old photos.

I hadn't.

Every. Single. One. 🤬

Also, editors: if we ever talked about Nihonjin, that was probably long enough ago that you’re now at a new job, so I’m happy to start fresh 🫠

Front cover of Ojichan by Oscar Nakasato

Front cover of new edition of Nihonjin by Oscar Nakasato

Front cover of Três camadas de noite by Vanessa Barbara

Made it home from LBF with a few new additions. Nobody does cover design like Brazil, and nobody appreciates craft and attention to detail (matching bookmarks! embossed logo!) like the amazing Fósforo. Sample or pitch or some combination thereof available for all three.

You clearly don’t know anything about North Carolina.

View from my desk at Looren Translation House

Spending the week at Looren, where I’m surprisingly getting a lot done on my translation in spite of these distracting views

Give me ONE reason for us to use AI (in any industry) that doesn't ultimately come down to 'because it saves rich people and big corporations' money...literally just ONE and I'll listen...if it's about improving OUR productivity then it should be OUR choice AND should come at no cost to us

Ooooh! I can't wait!

Translated into English for the first time?! I had no idea!

GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ: I don't know who the hell it is that's ended up convincing us—the people who want to start a revolution-to accept the idea that revolution is apocalyp-tic, catastrophic, and bloody. We need to grasp once and for all that it's counterrevolution that's apocalyptic and catastrophic and bloody. You already know the figures: more than thirty thousand dead, thousands im-prisoned, thousands tortured by the leaders of the Chilean military coup. My idea of revolution is of the search for individual happiness through collective happiness, which is the only just form of happiness.

Reading the interviews of Gabriel García Márquez and this passage stands out to me, from the 1970s but relevant in this time, that in this era the fight must be for collective happiness, which as he astutely describes, is the only kind of just happiness

The Fort Bragg Murders At least 44 Fort Bragg soldiers died stateside in 2020 — several of them were homicides. Families want answers. The Army isn’t giving any.

A journalist at Rolling Stone wrote an article about the violence at that very same base a few years ago: www.rollingstone.com/culture/cult... He wrote another article about the rampant child sex abuse on base, but apparently couldn't get it published because it was "too dark"

Out of office reply

Maybe my husband will find a way to order the two years of royalty statements a publisher is mysteriously unable to send me 😉

The best candy bar.

Official Cercador Prize badge

Of Cattle and Men on the counter of Island Books

🎉Many congratulations to Cercador '23 winner Of Cattle and Men! High five to the judges for all their hard work! 🐄🐖

A Publishers Weekly news item that reads: The winner of the inaugural Cercador Prize for Literature in Translation is translator Zoë Perry for her translation, from the Portuguese, of Of Cattle and Men by Ana Paula Maia (Charco). The book is Afro-Brazilian author Maia’s second book translated into English. Her first, Saga of Brutes, was translated by Alexandra Joy Forman and published in 2016 by Dalkey Archive Press. The prize was launched this July by Spencer Ruchti, the author events manager at Third Place Books in Seattle, and Justin Walls, the coeditor of translation-focused pick-of-the-month series Du Mois Monthly. Its winners are selected by a committee of independent booksellers from across the country. It is the only award of its kind.”

Announcing the winner of the 2023 Cercador Prize: @zoeperry.bsky.social’s translation of Ana Paula Maia's OF CATTLE AND MEN.

The Cercador committee says OF CATTLE AND MEN "lays bare the brutal labor of the slaughterhouse trade," hailing the novel as a "new breed of western."

So happy to announce the finalists of the Cercador Prize, the first literary prize for works in translation chosen solely by booksellers. Congratulations to all the finalists. Long live the Cercador!