prose & presentations

I hold a BA in Political Science, minor in French, from the University of Pennsylvania; an MA in International Relations, with honors – the René Cassin Award for Academic Excellence – SIU, Paris, with a thesis on the CEDAW: International Law and its Implementation; an MFA in Poetry from Carlow University (Pittsburgh/Dublin); and a PhD in Translation and Intercultural Studies, with honors, from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, with a dissertation on first translations of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, into Catalan, French and Spanish, with special emphasis on the Catalan, by urbanista, city-garden advocate & US Utopian, Cebrià Montoliu, under the direction of Poet, Translator & Professor Emeritus, Francesc Parcerisas.

I present on a range of topics, from the role of NGO’s in international law implementation, particularly the CEDAW (Sofia), to women’s organizations as expressions of citizenship (Poznań), to translation, Whitman in translation, friendship, workers’ struggles, to 19th-20th c. Barcelona. I have worked as teacher, professor, editor and pro bono on human rights cases. I have consulted and collaborated on special political & cultural events and publications, including with the IRC, PEN, and the French Book Office and Cultural Services. I’ve worked with non-governmental human rights organizations, as well as with the United Nations General Assembly, Security Council, UNESCO, and the Spanish Mission to the UN.

— 2023 —

Millay Arts (NY), https://www.millayarts.org

NES Artist Residency (Iceland), https://neslist.is

Write On, Door County (WI), https://writeondoorcounty.org

Cité Internationale des Arts (France), https://www.citedesartsparis.net / https://www.citedesartsparis.net/en/

— CURRENT WORK —

Biography of Cebrià Montoliu (Palma, 1873 – Albuquerque, 1923)

Catalan urbanista, city-garden activist and a planner of the single-tax colony of Fairhope, Alabama. Montoliu was also an education reformer, librarian and the first to translate into Catalan Emerson, Ruskin, Shakespeare and Whitman.

See L’Avenç, September 2019: https://www.iquiosc.cat/l-avenc/numero/460

— 2022 —

OSTI (OR), 9^th Annual Conference
Creator & Facilitator: Literary Translation Workshop
https://ostiweb.org

— 2021 —

Princeton University: Global Publishing & The Making of Literary Worlds: Translation, Media & Mobility Organized by Princeton University’s Fung Global Fellows Program, the International Comparative Literature Association and Princeton University Press
Presented: Cebrià Montoliu: transatlantic urbanista and first translator of Walt Whitman
https://globalpublishing.princeton.edu

— 2019 —

Aguascalientes Literary Festival
–Panel: alongside poet Javier Acosta Escareño: Whitman in Catalan & Spanish Translations
–Workshop: Whitman, Roma, Translation & Friendship
Aguascalientes, Mexico

Fairhope Center for the Writing Arts
–Fairhope Library & Fairhope Museum of History presentations: Montoliu in Fairhope
Fairhope, Alabama, USA

Historic Links between Spain & North America: Congreso V
–Presentation: The Fight for the 8-hour Work-Day: A Comparative Study: The Haymarket Riots (Chicago, 1886) & La Setmana Tràgica (Barcelona, 1909)
Alcalá de Henares, Spain

Youngstown Literary Festival
–Presentation: Writing in & Translating “Minor” Languages
Youngstown, Ohio, USA

— 2018 —

International Walt Whitman Week: Conference & Symposium
–Presentation: Cebrià Montoliu: Catalan urbanista, Whitman translator (& US utopian)
–Workshop: Whitman in Translation…into Arabic, Catalan, German, Italian, Spanish
Dortmund, Germany

Historic Links between Spain & North America: Congreso IV
–Presentation: Cebrià Montoliu: Iberian urbanista in the US
Manhattan, New York, USA

— 2017 —

PhD
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
Under the Direction of Dr. Francesc Parcerisas, Poet, Translator & Professor Emeritus
Mention: Excellent

— 2016 —

International Walt Whitman Week: Conference & Symposium
–Presentation: Emerson, Whitman & Yeats: The Idea of the National Poet
Exeter, England

The Politics of Translation / Universitat de les Illes Balears
Palma, Mallorca, Spain