The Institute for Latino Studies & the Creative Writing Program present:
EN OTRAS PALABRAS, panel & performance: poetry in translation*
September 30, 2026
205 McKenna Hall
2:30 pm: panel discussion, introduced and moderated by Rachel Galvin, featuring Rosa Alcalá, Francisco Aragón & Kristin Dykstra
6:45 pm: ILS reception (outside of 205 McKenna)
7:30 pm: Rosa Alcalá & Kristin Dykstra a poetry reading*
&
Gerardo Diego’s Handbook of Foams as translated by Francisco Aragón: a performance in four voices
*These two sessions form part of:
3 on the 30th
ILS events @ McKenna Hall.
September 30, 2026
Panel & Performance (2:30 pm & 7:30 pm)
Young Scholars Symposium (5:00 pm "The Riven Object: Destruction and Repair in Latinx Art" by Chon A. Noriega)
Poet-translators
Born and raised in Paterson, NJ, Rosa Alcala's poetry and translation have appeared in Harper’s, The Atlantic, Poetry, The Best American Poetry, and numerous other magazines and anthologies. Her work has received support from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Harvard’s Woodberry Poetry Room. YOU (Coffee House Press, 2024) is her fourth and most recent poetry collection. A Consulting Editor for the University of Chicago Press’ Phoenix Poetry Series, she is the DeWetter Endowed Chair in Poetry at the University of Texas at El Paso.
Francisco Aragón is the son of Nicaraguan immigrants and a native of San Francisco, CA. His third book of poems was After Rubén (Red Hen Press, 2020). His work has appeared in over twenty anthologies, most recently, Latino Poetry: a Library of America Anthology. He has performed his work widely, including at the Dodge Poetry Festival. His fourth book of translations is Handbook of Foams/Manual de espumas (Shearsman Books, 2026) by Spanish poet Gerardo Diego. He has also translated and co-translated the poetry of Rubén Darío, Francisco X. Alarcón, and Federico García Lorca. He directs Letras Latinas at the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies.
Kristin Dykstra’s poetry collection Dissonance was published by the University of Chicago Press. Her most recent book-length translation is The Star-Spangled Brand by Marcelo Morales. Dykstra’s 2023 translation, The Lady of Elche, recuperates a key work by Amanda Berenguer that vests bodies with the politics of memory in post-dictatorship Uruguay. Previously Dykstra translated numerous book-length collections, including four editions of Cuban poetry published by the University of Alabama Press. Among her recognitions are the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, an NEA Fellowship for Literary Translation, and the Phoenix Emerging Poet Award. Her newest poems are forthcoming in Lana Turner.
Rachel Galvin is a poet, translator, and scholar. She is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago, where she is Director of Translation Studies. She has published a work of criticism, News of War: Civilian Poetry 1936–1945, and three poetry collections including Uterotopia (2023). She won the Scott Moncrieff Prize for Translation for her rendition of Raymond Queneau’s Hitting the Streets, and her co-translation of Decals: Complete Early Poetry of Oliverio Girondo was a finalist for the National Translation Award. Rachel is a founding member of the international creative translation collective, the Outranspo.