Mara Faye Lethem

Biography

Mara Faye Lethem is a writer, researcher, and literary translator from Catalan and Spanish.

Her translation of Irene Solà’s When I Sing, Mountains Dance was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Barrios Book in Translation Prize, the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize, and the Prix Jan Michalski, and winner of the Nota Bene Prize and the Lewis Galantière Award. She won the inaugural Spain-USA Foundation Translation Award for Max Besora’s The Adventures and Misadventures of Joan Orpí. She was also awarded the Joan Baptiste Cendrós International Prize for her contributions to Catalan literature.

Authors she has translated include Pol Guasch, Karina Pacheco Medrano, Manuel Baixauli, Patricio Pron, Mar García Puig, Javier Calvo, Jaume Cabré, Alana S. Portero, Toni Sala, David Trueba, Albert Sánchez-Piñol, Beatriz Serrano, Jordi Nopca, Marta Orriols, and Alicia Kopf. Her translations have been recognized with a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and several English PEN awards.

Her novel, A Person’s A Person, No Matter How Small, has been translated into two languages. Her writing has been included in anthologies including Berkeley Noir, A Velocity of Being, and Brooklyn: A State of Mind and supported by residencies at Residència Literària Finestres, Faberllull Olot, and Art Omi. She has spent the last lustrum in archives (in Spain, Mexico, and France) for her PhD from the University of St Andrews. She’s currently trying to improve her Yiddish.