Javier Adrada at The Writer’s Center

This panel discussion on international poetry and poetry in translation at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda features award-winning Spanish poet Javier Adrada de la Torre, along with poets and translators Nancy Naomi Carlson, Patricia Davis, and Heather Green.

The Writer’s Center, founded in 1976, is an independent literary organization located in Bethesda, Maryland. Housed in a 12,200-square-foot facility in the arts and entertainment district, it serves as a hub for approximately 2,500 writers, editors, and publishers. The center offers a variety of services, including creative writing workshops in all genres, free literary events, and opportunities to connect with the Washington, DC, and national literary communities. It also publishes Poet Lore, the longest continuously running poetry journal in the United States. The Writer’s Center is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, supported in part by various arts councils and grants.

Javier Adrada

Javier Adrada de la Torre, born in Madrid in 1996, is a Spanish writer and scholar who has gained recognition in both literary and academic circles. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Hispanic Philology from the Autonomous University of Madrid and began his doctoral studies in Spain in 2019.

Adrada de la Torre’s literary career reached a significant milestone when he won the Premio Emilio Prados for his poetry work Ensayo sobre una cebolla infinita. This achievement has established him as a notable voice in contemporary Spanish poetry. His literary output also includes other works such as La aurora de los girasoles and Gasolineras.

As a scholar, Adrada de la Torre is currently pursuing his PhD at the University of Salamanca’s Faculty of Translation and Documentation, supported by a doctoral fellowship from the ‘la Caixa’ Foundation. His research interests span comparative literature, with a focus on the relationship between Spanish poet Luis Cernuda and German poet Friedrich Hölderlin, particularly in the areas of translation and poetry.

Adrada de la Torre’s academic work is diverse, with publications dating from 2017 to 2023, reflecting his ongoing contributions to the field of Hispanic literature and translation studies.

Other participants

Nancy Naomi Carlson won the 2022 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize and was shortlisted for the Best Translated Book Award and the Sarah Maguire Translation Prize. Author of fifteen titles (ten translated), her second poetry collection, as well as a co-translation, were noted in the New York Times. A recipient of two translation grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, an Albertine Fund translation grant, and decorated by the French government with the Academic Palms, Carlson is the Translations Editor for On the Seawall. Her translation of Djiboutian Abdourahman Waberi’s When We Only Have the Earth is forthcoming in March from the African Poetry Book Series.

Patricia Davis is a poet, playwright, and human rights activist. Her translations of Cuban, Guatemalan, and Chilean poetry have appeared in the New Laurel Review, Puerto Del Sol, and other journals. Her poetry has been published in Image, Southern Humanities Review, Salt Hill, Smartish Pace, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and other journals. A graduate of the MFA program at American University, she is translations editor of Poet Lore and lives in the Washington, DC area, where she works in human rights advocacy.

Heather Green is the author of No Other Rome (Akron Poetry Series, 2021) and the translator of Tristan Tzara’s Noontimes Won (Octopus Books, 2018), Guide to the Heart Rail (Goodmorning Menagerie, 2017), and Speaking Alone (forthcoming 2025). Her translations have received a Hemingway grant, a French Voices award, and the inaugural Albertine Translation Prize in Fiction. Green is currently the Visual Editor for Asymptote, a journal of international literature, an Assistant Professor in the School of Art at George Mason University, and a member of the poetry faculty of the Chesapeake Writers’ Conference and Cedar Crest College’s Pan-European MFA program.