Heather Cleary is writer and award-winning translator based in Mexico City. Her writing has appeared in Two Lines, Lit Hub, and Poets & Writers, among other publications; her book, The Translator’s Visibility: Scenes from Contemporary Latin American Fiction, shows how narratives of translation can upend established notions of intellectual property and propriety. She co-edited McSweeney’s 65: Plundered with Valeria Luiselli and Tsunami with Gabriela Jauregui, and is currently writing a novel about translation and betrayal.
Her translations include Luis Felipe Fabre’s Recital of the Dark Verses (winner, Queen Sofia Spanish Institute Translation Prize), Fernanda Trías’s Pink Slime (winner, English PEN Award and nominee, National Book Award), Roque Larraquy’s Comemadre (nominee, National Book Award), Sergio Chejfec’s The Planets (finalist, Best Translated Book Award), and Poems to Read on a Streetcar, a selection of Oliverio Girondo’s poetry (recipient, PEN and Programa SUR translation grants).
She has served on the jury of the National Book Award in Translation, the Queen Sofia Spanish Institute Translation Prize, the Best Translated Book Award, and the PEN Translation Award, and is known to jump at the chance to speak about contemporary Latin American literature and/or translation. A founding editor of the digital, multi-lingual Buenos Aires Review and founding member of the Cedilla & Co. translation collective, she holds an MA in Comparative Literature from NYU and a PhD in Latin American and Iberian Cultures from Columbia University.
Heather Cleary 