On fiction, feminism and the cost of pursuing the truth: An evening with translator Maureen Shaughnessy

What is it like to translate the experience of sexual abuse and the search for justice from one language to another, and from one political context to different ones?

In Why Did You Come Back Every Summer the Argentine author Belén López Peiró takes us with a firm hand into the most private spaces, where the most intimate betrayals occur. The book is a search for justice, through the intricate, chaotic fabric of relationships, bureaucracy, hope, frustration, shame and resistance - emerging in a chorus of voices, documents and moments. It's a thunderously honest account of a quest for answers that may be nowhere to be found.

We're truly honoured to welcome the author's English translator, Maureen Shaughnessy, to the shop for an evening exploring her role as the translator of Why Did You Come Back Every Summer, to unpick what it means to hold this kind of story as it travels, feminism and gender violence in Argentina and more broadly in Latin America and working with women authors in the region.

Our speaker:

Maureen Shaughnessy is a writer and translator from Spanish. Her published translations include works by Sara Gallardo, Hebe Uhart, and Nurit Kasztelan. Her translations have been published by Archipelago Books and Cardboard House Press, and featured in The Paris Review, Brick, World Literature Today, LALT, AGNI, WWB and Asymptote. Her forthcoming translations include a novel by Lucía Lijtmaer and microfictions by Leila Sucari. Raised in Oregon, she now lives in Bariloche, Argentina.