BIOGRAPHY
Katharine Halls is an Arabic-to-English translator from Cardiff, Wales, and a literary agent at 10/11. Her translation, with Adam Talib, of Raja Alem’s The Dove’s Necklace (Duckworth Overlook, 2016) received the 2017 Sheikh Hamad Award for Translation and was shortlisted for the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation. She was awarded a 2021 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant to translate Haytham El-Wardany’s short story collection Things That Can’t Be Fixed and a 2023 Berlin Senatsverwaltung für Kultur grant to translate Hilal Chouman’s novel Sadness In My Heart. Her translations for the stage have been performed at the Royal Court and the Edinburgh Festival, and short texts have appeared in Frieze, The Believer, Africa Is a Country, The Common, Asymptote, Arts of the Working Class, World Literature Today, stadtsprachen, Words Without Borders, Exberliner, Newfound, Adda, Critical Muslim, Perpetual Postponement, and various anthologies. Her translation of Ahmed Naji’s brave, irreverent prison memoir Rotten Evidence is out with McSweeney’s in October 2023.
10/11
is a new collective of translators, based in Germany and the UK, who promote bold contemporary Arabic literature in European languages. Founded by prolific Arabic-German translator Sandra Hetzl, 10/11 expanded with the arrival of Arabic-English translators Katharine Halls and Alice Guthrie. The three share a vision of taking Arabic literature out of the realms of niche venues and specialist publishers and into the mainstream European literary scene. 10/11 functions as a unique kind of literary agency, connecting the authors whose work Sandra, Katharine and Alice translate with publishers who want to publish Arabic titles but don’t know where to start. The practice of translation lies at the heart of 10/11’s work, reflecting Alice, Katharine and Sandra’s belief that Arabic literature can only thrive in other languages when it is translated lovingly by translators who are passionate and knowledgeable. The three also share resources and critique each other’s work, finding collaboration and idea-sharing to be a vital complement to the individual creativity of literary translation.
PROJECT
Katharine Halls and Alice Guthrie will be in residence at Nawat Fes from January to March 2024. They will be using their time in Fes to immerse themselves in the Moroccan literary scene, expanding and consolidating their existing networks and researching new Moroccan literature to translate, as well as dedicating time and deep focus to the Moroccan books they’ve been wanting to read for ages. While in residence, they will begin translating several Moroccan literary works into English, prepare translation samples in order to promote Moroccan books to European publishers, and offer a number of public workshops. Alice will be building on a longstanding interest in Moroccan literature, having translated texts by several late great Moroccan writers: Aziz Benhaddouch, Mohamed Zafzaf, and most notably Malika Moustadraf, whose collected short fiction appeared in her translation in 2022 as Blood Feast (Feminist Press) and Something Strange, Like Hunger (Saqi). Both Katharine and Alice are also looking forward to studying Darija during their residency, intending to convert the Egyptian and Syrian spoken Arabic in which they are respectively fluent to the beautiful Moroccan autochthonous language.
