In and Out of Translation: A Conversation with Author and Translator

The Alliance is delighted to welcome back award-winning author Jake Hinkson, in conversation with translator Sophie Aslanides for a lively panel discussion that will address the art and challenges of translation and writing, the role and responsibility of the translator, the cross-cultural capacity and function of genre, and much more!

Join us for this unique event, a one-hour discussion panel followed by a Q&A, book signing and libations.

This event will be conducted in English, with French flair.  

About Jake Hinkson

Novelist Jake Hinkson was born and raised in Arkansas. He has written six novels, as well as articles and profiles for The Los Angeles Review Of Books, Mental Floss, and Noir City, and he is the author of the essay collection The Blind Alley: Exploring Film Noir’s Forgotten Corners. His books have been translated into French, German, Italian, and he has received the two most prestigious awards granted to literary crime fiction in France: in 2016, his novel Hell on Church Street (L’Enfer de Church Street) was awarded the Prix Mystère de la Critique, and his novel No Tomorrow (Sans Lendemain) was awarded the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière in 2018. He lives in Chicago.

About Sophie Aslanides

Born of French and Greek parents, Sophie Aslanides spent part of her childhood in the United States, before returning to France with a linguistically scrambled brain - she was forced to relearn her “native” language at the age of nine. After studying ancient languages and English, she went on to teach students who found it strange to be so passionate about grammar. After painstakingly finishing her PhD, she realized that university research was too anxiety-provoking for her to thrive. She switched to a different kind of audience, the Classes préparatoires aux Grandes écoles — she taught translation to young scientific minds who appreciated this recreation in their number-crunching lives, and corrected statements such as “the Queen of England is re-elected every four years” with great bursts of laughter. Some twenty years ago, after desperate efforts to meet publishers and offer her services, one publisher trusted her and she signed her first contract. It was the beginning of a career that would eventually lead her to devote herself exclusively to literary translation, after years of combining two demanding professional lives.