2025 Day of Translation: Keynote Conversation with Jhumpa Lahiri and Katie Kitamura

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Thursday, 6:00 pm EDT September 18, 2025

The Center for Fiction

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This event is sold out.

The 2025 Day of Translation, presented by the Center for the Art of Translation, culminates in a keynote conversation featuring Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Jhumpa Lahiri and bestselling author Katie Kitamura.

Translation, broadly conceived, lies at the heart of Jhumpa Lahiri and Katie Kitamura’s work. For Lahiri, translation is more than an art; it’s a profound metamorphosis, a radical act of reshaping text and self. Kitamura’s fiction features translators, interpreters, and actors, for whom translation is physical labor, an embodiment of another’s language, and a performance of intimacy. Using translation as their guide, Lahiri and Kitamura will discuss the journey of finding one’s voice in other languages and on the page.

Whether you are a reader of literary translation, a literary translator at any stage in your career, or simply captivated by the movement of ideas among languages, people, and places, Day of Translation is sure to provide a passionate community to learn. View the full schedule of events here.

Support for this program provided by Faranak Adibi Foundation with special thanks to Mina Hamedi.

Note: Ticket holders will need to exit after the free Day of Translation panels and re-enter for the Keynote event. Proof of purchase required. The venue will release waitlist and walk-in tickets on a first-come, first-served basis, if available. The keynote conversation will not be livestreamed.

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Featuring

  • Lahiri PR Photo (Credit Laura Sciacovelli) (2)

    Jhumpa Lahiri

    Jhumpa Lahiri

    Jhumpa Lahiri, a bilingual writer and translator, is the Millicent C. McIntosh Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at Barnard College, Columbia University. She received the Pulitzer Prize in 2000 for Interpreter of Maladies and is also the author of The Namesake, Unaccustomed Earth, and The Lowland. Since 2015, Lahiri has been writing fiction, essays, and poetry in Italian: In Altre Parole (In Other Words), Il Vestito dei libri (The Clothing of Books), Dove mi trovo (self-translated as Whereabouts), Il quaderno di Nerina, and Racconti romani. She received the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama in 2014, and in 2019 was named Commendatore of the Italian Republic by President Sergio Mattarella. Her most recent book in English, Translating Myself and Others, was a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay.


    Photo Credit: Laura Sciacovelli

  • 0000002041643_Katie_Kitamura (1)

    Katie Kitamura

    Katie Kitamura

    Katie Kitamura is the bestselling author of A Separation and Intimacies, one of the New York Times’ “10 Best Books of 2021.” Known for her elegant prose that asks powerful questions about morality, identity, and narrative, her work has been translated into 21 languages and is being adapted for film and television. In her talks on fiction and identity, she delves into language, the immigrant experience, and finding her voice as a writer.

About Our Partners

The Center for the Art of Translation is dedicated to finding dazzling new, overlooked, and underrepresented voices, brought into English by the best translators, and to celebrating the art of translation. Our publications, events, and educational programming enrich the library of vital literary works, nurture and promote the work of translators, build audiences for literature in translation, and honor the incredible linguistic and cultural diversity of our schools and our world.

Visit catranslation.org for more information.

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