What happens when translation leaves the printed page and enters the public environment of a bookshop? As part of Oxford Translation Day, independent bookshop Curio Books and Culture will welcome the community into its vault to celebrate the power of literature in translation. During the weeks leading up to Oxford Translation Day, Curio will invite bookshop visitors to nominate their own shortlist of translated literature, which will be displayed alongside the 2024 Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize shortlist.
On Friday evening, founder of Curio Books, Nick Hagan and Tinashe Mushakavanhu will reflect on the two selections through conversation and zine-making with the audience and consider the questions: How can we think about translated literature within the setting of an independent, second-hand bookshop like Curio? How do we come to find a work in translation, and how does it, in turn, find and shape us?
Register via Eventbrite, here.
Nick Hagan opened Curio Books and Culture in December 2023, launching a new, alternative space for literature and community events in Oxford. As well as curating Curio, Nick is also a freelance writer with an interest in cultural analysis including film, literature, psychology and philosophy.
Tinashe Mushakavanhu is a writer, editor, and Junior Research Fellow in African and Comparative Literature at St Anne’s College, Oxford. He is co-creator and lead researcher on readingzimbabwe.com, a digital archive collecting, cataloguing, digitising and making available information on books about Zimbabwe from the 1950s to the present. He is also co-founder of Black Chalk & Co, which brings together writers, artists, designers, academics, and technologists and engenders a new culture and new forms of publishing and creative production. Some of his recent books include Some Writers Can Give You Two Heartbeats (Black Chalk & Co, 2019) and Ndabaningi Sithole: A Forgotten Founding Father (HSRC Press, 2023).