CKCU Literary News
Wednesday March 3rd, 2021 with Hans G. Ruprecht
Award winning poet and novelist Alta IFLAND in conversation about the multicultural self and literary creativity.

Alta Ifland is an award winning poet, writer of fiction and a literary translator who lives in Santa Cruz, California (USA). She was born and grew up in Communist Romania. She came as a political refugee to the US in 1991, where she earned a master's degree and a PhD in French language and literature. After a brief period of teaching in academia, she worked as a professional book reviewer, and began writing prose fiction and poetry in her third language (English). As a literary translator she works from/into Romanian, French and English. Alta Ifland is the author of two collections of prose poems 'Voix de glace/Voice of ice,' bilingual, self-translated from French, for which she was awarded the important Prix du Poème en Prose Louis Guillaume (2008) in France. Her second collection of prose poems is called 'The Snail’s Song'. Alta Ifland also published two books of short stories: 'Elegy for a Fabulous World' (2010} which was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award. For her book of stories 'Death-in-a-Box' (2010) she won the Subito Press Fiction Prize. Among the writers she has translated are Lorand Gaspar (French-English), Raymond Queneau (French-English), W. S. Merwin (English-French), Norman Manea (Romanian-English), Mariana Marin (Romanian-English). She has also co-translated (with Florin Buzdugan) some of her prose poems from The Snail’s Song from English into her native language, Romanian. Alta Ifland's🔻novel 'The Wife Who Wasn’t' (New Europe Books) and her translation (with Eireene Nealand) of 'Le Camion' by Marguerite Duras (The Darkroom, Contra Mundum Press), are coming out in Spring 2021. At present, she is working on a novel inspired by the life of the first two of Romania’s queens, Marie and Elisabeta. More: http://www.altaifland.com/bio.html#