Alana Marie Levinson-LaBrosse and Shook: May 6, 2023

Zêdan Xelef tells the story of their coming to know and befriend Alana Levinson-LaBrosse (and eventually also David Shook) while attending college in Northern Iraq and living in a large internally displaced persons camp there (the Chamishko Camp, bordering on the city of Zakho, in Iraqi Kurdistan).

Levinson-LaBrosse and Shook, in turn, are asked about specific aspects of their work as poet-translators, teacher, and publisher, and read from exemplary poems, with Xelef providing translations of some of Levinson-LaBrosse's works into either Kurmanji or Arabic.

Levinson-LaBrosse tells stories of her coming to poetry and translation, teaching writing and translation workshops in Iraq, engaging in collective translations (e.g., of Kurdish poet Kajal Ahmad), and presents her poems adapted from generous interviews with some of the people she's encountered. Subsequently she speaks of Kashkul, the organization she helped found, "inspired by the Sufi’s begging bowl and a heartfelt sense of urgency to bring Kurdish and Iraqi culture to a global audience" (Sarwar Efendi).

Shook likewise relates the tale of coming into poetry and translation, growing up as a US-American resident of Mexico. They introduce and present their own poems, and tell stories of publishing their translations of poetry from Isthmus Zapotec by indigenous Mexican poet Victor Terán, and of the politically-charged graphic novel Obi's Nightmare, in Ecuatorial Guinea, Africa's sole post-colonial Spanish-language nation.

The afternoon closes with a question from the audience, and Levinson-LaBrosse's response regarding two challenging instances in translation: one of frustration, and one of felicity.