{"id":303522,"date":"2018-03-07T13:58:29","date_gmt":"2018-03-07T18:58:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=303522"},"modified":"2018-05-09T08:59:01","modified_gmt":"2018-05-09T12:59:01","slug":"open-letter-gives-voice-to-women-authors-in-translation-303522","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/open-letter-gives-voice-to-women-authors-in-translation-303522\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Letter gives voice to women authors in translation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Between 2008 and 2017, just 29 percent of all translated books published in the United States were by women authors. Chad Post, director of Open Letter\u2014the University\u2019s nonprofit, literary translation press<\/a>\u2014has been calling attention to the problem. And with support from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), Open Letter is helping to address it.<\/p>\n

Post assembled the numbers on men and women authors in translation using the Translation Database<\/a>, a tool he founded at Rochester. The database is now supported and hosted by Publisher\u2019s Weekly<\/em>. It offers 10 years of information on the translation book market\u2014a first for an industry that has long lacked reliable data.<\/p>\n

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On the calendar<\/h3>\n

On March 13, at 7 p.m., Open Letter will host a reading by author Madame Nielsen at The Spirit Room in downtown Rochester. <\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The translation market in the United States is already small\u2014only 3 percent of books published here are translated books. And Post calls the figure of 29 percent of that 3 percent \u201cstunningly bad,\u201d especially given that the majority of book buyers and publishing industry employees are women.<\/p>\n

The NEA in January awarded a $35,000 grant to support the Open Letter Books Women Writers Series. The series will offer six works:<\/p>\n