Events

Event details

Join Mizna for our first-ever Portland event—an evening of readings from the Translational issue of our eponymous literary journal. Mizna: Translational explores translation “as genre, theory, praxis, culture, industry, gaze, gaze back; half labor, half art; antiproperty and phantom property,” in the words of writer, scholar, and translator Mona Kareem, who curated and commissioned pieces that ask: What is translation? Who is the translator? Why translate? For whom? Featuring a stellar lineup of authors and translators—Kareem James Abu-Zeid, Stine An, Yuemin He, Jack Saebyok Jung, and Safa Khatib. Presented in partnership with Chess Club at their new location!

WHEN: October 22, 2026 at 7pm

WHERE: Chess Club, 1111 SW Washington St, Portland, Oregon 97205

RSVP HERE

Readers

Kareem James Abu-Zeid, PhD, is a translator of poets and novelists from across the Arab world. He has received the Sarah Maguire Prize, PEN Center USA’s translation prize, Poetry Magazine’s translation prize, a Fulbright Fellowship, and an NEA grant, and has thrice been a finalist for the PEN America Translation Prize.

Stine An is a poet, translator, and performer in NYC whose work explores diasporic poetics, experimental translation, and virtual performance. Their work appears in Best Literary Translations, Best Experimental Writing, Poem-a-Day, Words Without Borders, and elsewhere. A 2024 NEA Translation Fellow, Stine is the author of S_MMER CR_SH and the translator of Today’s Morning Vocabulary by Yoo Heekyung.

Yuemin He is the recent winner of the Jules Chametzky Translation Prize from the Massachusetts Review. Her translations include I Have Seen the Yellow Crane and poems in more than thirty magazines and journals, including the Cincinnati Review, Copper Nickel, and the Southern Review. Currently she is an English professor at Northern Virginia Community College.

Jack Saebyok Jung is a 2024 NEA Translation Fellow and the author of Hocus Pocus Bogus Locus. He cotranslated Yi Sang: Selected Works and his next book of translation, Kim Hyesoon’s Lady No, will be published by Ecco. He teaches at Davidson College.

Safa Khatib is a poet, translator, and teacher living in St. Louis, MO. She is the author of A Dress of Locusts.