Fair: The Life-Art of Translation with Jen Calleja & Toby Litt

Join us for an evening of conversation as part of Jen Calleja's book tour for her latest release: 'Fair: The Life-Art of Translation'. It's a satirical, refreshing and brilliantly playful book about learning the art of translation, being a bookworker in the publishing industry, growing up, family, and class. Loosely set in an imagined book fair/art fair/fun fair, in which every stall or ride imitates a real-world scenario or dilemma which must be observed and negotiated, the book moves between personal memories and larger questions about the role of the literary translator in publishing, about fairness and hard work, the ways we define success, and what it means – and whether it is possible – to make a living as an artist.

Jen Calleja is a poet, writer and essayist who has been widely published, including in
The White Review, The London Magazine, and Best British Short Stories (Salt). She
was awarded an Authors’ Foundation Grant from the Society of Authors to work on
debut novel Vehicle (Prototype, 2023), an excerpt of which was shortlisted for the
Short Fiction/University of Essex Prize. Jen’s short story collection I’m Afraid That’s
All We’ve Got Time For was published by Prototype in 2020, and Goblinhood: Goblin
as a Mode was published by Rough Trade Books in 2024. An excerpt from Fair was
Longlisted for the Ivan Juritz Prize for Experimentation in Text. Jen has been
shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize and
the Schlegel-Tieck Prize as a literary translator from German into English and was
the inaugural Translator in Residence at the British Library. Jen is co-founding editor
of Praspar Press and played and toured in the DIY punk band Sauna Youth. 

General Admission: £5.00