Alumna Shoshana Akabas '18 Named 2020 Virtual ALTA Travel Fellow

By
Nicole Saldarriaga
September 28, 2020

The American Literary Translators Association recently announced that alumna Shoshana Akabas '18 is among the recipients of its 2020 Virtual ALTA Travel Fellowship.  

The ALTA Travel Fellowships typically award $1000 each to 4-6 emerging translators in order to cover the travel expenses associated with attending the annual ALTA Conference. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the ALTA Conference will be held virtually this year. Despite this change, and to continue celebrating emerging translators with great promise, ALTA awarded nine $500 dollar fellowships, including two Peter K. Jansen Memorial Fellowships, and will further celebrate this year's Virtual Travel Fellows by producing a "downloadable audio chapbook of the Fellows reading from their winning translations." This chapbook will be available on ALTA's Soundcloud page at 2 pm ET on October 8, 2020. 

Akabas, who learned Hebrew at Beit Rabban, an elementary school in New York City where she was raised, has translated the work of Inbar Livnat, a young Israeli writer whose work she first encountered through an excerpt of his novel, Coffee & Cake. Akabas was "immediately drawn in by Livnat's dark humor and emotional clarity" and enjoys "the challenge of preserving the rich, ancient roots of modern Hebrew while capturing the liminal space inhabited by Livnat's characters, who exist between the worlds of mental illness and health, national belonging and exile." 

Akabas has received artist fellowships from Jentel Foundation and Gladstone's Library, as well as a reporting grant from National Geographic Foundation. Her work, which includes translation as well as original fiction and non-fiction, has been featured in The Washington PostElle MagazineThe Kenyon ReviewThe BelieverElectric Lit, and American Short Fiction, among others. She lives and teaches in New York.