Hussain, Leliv, Meyer and Rockwell named as Princeton University translators in residence

The Program in Translation and Intercultural Communication (PTIC) has named Sawad Hussain, Hanna Leliv, Lily Meyer and Daisy Rockwell as Princeton University’s translators in residence. Each of the four translators will be joining the Princeton community for one semester over the course of academic years 2023-24 and 2024-25.

“The position of translator in residence allows our program to bring in professional translators who are currently working outside the university context to give our students a different perspective on the process of translation and on the life of a full-time translator,” said Karen Emmerich, associate professor of comparative literature and director of PTIC. “We are particularly excited to have these four inspiring translators joining our program over the coming two years. Each of them brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to the table, as well as a commitment to mentoring emerging translators.”

The PTIC program resides within the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, which provides support for translation workshops, guest lectures, study abroad and new courses. The Translator in Residence position is also supported by the Council on the Humanities and the Lewis Center for the Arts.

More about the newly appointed translators in residence:

Hanna Leliv (fall 2023) is a native of Lviv, Ukraine, where she works as a freelance translator and runs literary translation workshops at Ukrainian Catholic University. She was a Fulbright fellow at the University of Iowa’s Literary Translation Workshop and mentee at the Emerging Translators Mentorship Program run by the UK National Center for Writing. Her translations of contemporary Ukrainian literature into English have appeared in Asymptote, BOMB, Washington Square Review, Circumference, and elsewhere. In 2022, Astra House published “Stalking the Atomic City: Life Among the Decadent and the Depraved of Chornobyl” by Markiyan Kamysh in her translation. She is currently a faculty fellow at the Leslie Center for the Humanities at Dartmouth College.

Daisy Rockwell (spring 2024) is an artist and literary translator living in Vermont. She translates from Hindi and Urdu into English with a focus on women's writing. Her translation of the Hindi novel “Tomb of Sand” by Geetanjali Shree was the winner of the 2022 International Booker Prize and the 2022 Warwick Women's Prize in Translation. In 2019, she was awarded the MLA's Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for the Translation of a Literary Work for her translation of Krishna Sobti's “A Gujarat Here, a Gujarat There.” In 2023 she was awarded the Vani Foundation's Distinguished Translator Award. She holds a Ph.D. in South Asian Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago.

Lily Meyer (fall 2024) is a writer, translator and critic. Her translations include Claudia Ulloa Donoso's story collections “Little Bird” and “Ice for Martians.” Her first novel, “Short War,” is forthcoming from A Strange Object in 2024.

Sawad Hussain (spring 2025) is a translator from Arabic whose work has been recognized by English PEN, the Anglo-Omani Society and the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, among others. She is a judge for the Palestine Book Awards and the 2023 National Translation Award. She has run translation workshops under the auspices of Shadow Heroes, Africa Writes, Shubbak Festival, the Yiddish Book Center, the British Library and the National Centre for Writing. Her upcoming translations include “Edo's Souls” by the South Sudanese author Stella Gaitano.