2022 Chametzky Prize Interviews
- By Aviva Palencia
Summer Intern Aviva Palencia interviews translator Aga Gabor da Silva, winner of our annual Chametzky Translation Prize for her translation of Ewa Lipska’s “Can Always Happen” from its original Polish. Published in our Spring 2021 issue, Gabor da Silva’s masterfully translates this poem about longing for one’s country of origin. A transcript of this interview is available here.
Aviva also conducted an interview with Diana Senechal, who received an honorable mention. A transcript of this interview is available here.
AGNIESZKA (AGA) GABOR DA SILVA graduated from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where she studied Lusophone Literatures and Cultures. Aga also holds a Master of Arts in English Literature and Linguistics from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland. Her translations have appeared in Lunch Ticket, ANMLY, and Columbia Journal.
DIANA SENECHAL is the 2011 winner of the Hiett Prize in the Humanities and author of Republic of Noise: The Loss of Solitude in Schools and Culture (2012) and Mind over Memes: Passive Listening, Toxic Talk, and Other Modern Language Follies (2018). Her translations of Tomas Venclova’s poetry have appeared in Winter Dialogue (1997) and The Junction (2008); her translations of Hungarian literature have appeared in Literary Matters, Literary Imagination,The Satirist, Massachusetts Review, Asymptote, Modern Poetry in Translation, and The Continental Literary Magazine. "Scissors" is included in the collection Always Different: Poems of Memory (Deep Vellum, 2022), her translation of Gyula Jenei's Mindig más (2018). She teaches English and civilization at Varga Katalin Secondary School in Szolnok, Hungary.
AVIVA PALENCIA is an intern at the Massachusetts Review with a specialization in translation. As of 2022, she holds a B.A. in Linguistics, a B.A. in Spanish, and a certificate in Translation and Interpreting Studies from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. From 2021 to 2022, she was an assistant at the UMass Translation Center and did English-Spanish translation projects for the Just Words Translation and Interpreting Cooperative.
