Each year, literary works from some 60 languages across the globe appear in English, mostly published by independent publishers with commitment to international writing and cross-cultural understanding. But how do these books travel? How are titles selected? Who are the literary translators? What goes into translating literary works? Is there a particular way to read and appreciate translated literature? Aron Aji, director of the MFA in Literary Translation at the University of Iowa, addresses all of this and more. Aji is a translator from the Turkish, and has translated works by Bilge Karasu, Murathan Mungan, Elif Shafak and others. He received the 2004 National Translation Award for Karasu's The Garden of Departed Cats and NEA Translation Fellowships for Karasu's A Long Day's Evening and Mungan's My Heart's East (forthcoming).

Recorded October 1, 2015.