In this episode we are listening to writer and translator Kate Briggs and poet, writer and scholar Holly Pester discuss Hélène Bessette’s Lili Is Crying, which has been translated by Kate and published in the UK by Fitzcarraldo Editions.

Hélène Bessette (1918–2000) published thirteen novels with Gallimard between 1953 and 1973, won the Cazes prize in 1954 and was twice in the running for the Goncourt prize and the Médicis prize.

Kate Briggs grew up in Somerset, UK, and lives and works in Rotterdam, NL, where she founded and co-runs the writing and publishing project ‘Short Pieces That Move’. She is the  translator of two volumes of Roland Barthes’s lecture and seminar notes at the Collège de France: The Preparation of the Novel and How to Live Together, both published by Columbia University Press. This Little Art, her genre-bending essay on the art of translation, was published by Fitzcarraldo Editions in 2017. In 2021, she was awarded a Windham-Campbell Prize. Her debut novel, The Long Form, was published by Fitzcarraldo Editions in 2023 and shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize the same year.

Libreria wishes to thank Fitzcarraldo Editions who helped create this event at Libreria.

Books mentioned in the episode:

Lily Is Crying by Hélène Bessette, published by Fitzcarraldo Editions

This Little Art by Kate Briggs, published by Fitzcarraldo Editions

Fair: The Life-Art of Translation by Jen Calleja, published by Prototype