Two Line Press, a press line for the Center for the Art of Translations, concentrates on translations of phenomenal fiction from around the world. Oliver Sears initially founded the Two Lines journal (UC Catalog Search for journal) in 1993 to focus on the art of translation and acknowledge the hard, incredible work of the translators.[1] In 2000, Sears and a team of wonderful collaborators launched the Center for the Art of Translation (CAT) out of San Francisco both to run the journal and start the Calico Series for books.[2]
As of the writing of this post, the press is reaching toward 100 translations of books from Arabic, Czech, Finish, Macedonian, Swahili, Spanish, Thai, and more. Readers can take a look at their catalog at https://www.catranslation.org/books/.
You can find more about Two Lines Press’ events on their Instagram page. Note that as of the writing of this post, they have a series of events in both New York City and in San Francisco! The ones in San Francisco include book events such as Mary Jo Bang on Dante’s Paradiso with Tess Taylor (information) and participation in the Litquake Small Press Book (September 28).
Recent Titles
Readers are encouraged to check out these recent titles from UC Berkeley Library!
Elena Garro, Week of Colors, trans. Megan McDowell (Two Lines Press, 2025).
One of the amazing, small presses that we’ve acquired material from is Mammoth Publications (https://mammothpublications.net). Mammoth was founded in 2003 and is located in Healdsburg, CA. It was initially founded to provide a space for poets including Eddie Two-Rivers (Wikipedia) to release their work. Authors Thomas Pecore Weso and Denise Low served as co-publishers until 2023, releasing two-to-four books and/or chapbooks a year. Denise Low still heads Mammoth, continuing to release excellent works of poetry, memoirs, and more.
The press prioritizes Indigenous and regional authors.
Recent Mammoth Books
I encourage you to take a look at some of UC Berkeley’s recent acquisition of Mammoth Publication’s books, including:
Discover fantastic works of recently published Latinx literature in the Library’s collection this month! Hispanic Heritage Month celebrates the many accomplishments of Latinx communities and draws attention to their struggles, beginning on September 15th.
To my usual delight with speculative fiction, the Hugo awards have been announced! These controversial awards raise lots of questions about voice, audience, and the politics of publication. Nonetheless, they are usually worth a gander as awesome literature. I, for one, adore a couple of these authors.
Published by Europa Editions, The Passenger series offers an unconventional take on typical travel guides with new writing, original photography, art, and reportage from around the world. The series was first launched in 2018 by the independent Italian publisher Iperborea, and was brought into English by Europa in 2020. It has also been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, and Korean.
The book-magazine travels far and wide to bring back the best writing from the places it visits. It assembles not only reportage, but also long-form journalism and narrative essays with the aim of telling stories of the contemporary life of a place and its inhabitants: “It takes readers beyond the familiar stereotypes to portray the shifting culture and identity of a place, its public debates, the sensibilities of its people, its burning issues, its pleasures and its pain.”
An Author Recommends section provides cultural tips on books, films, music and more from contemporary authors such as Valeria Luisell (Mexico), Banana Yoshimoto (Japan), Enrique Vila-Matas (Barcelona), Pitchaya Sudbanthad (Thailand), Paolo Macry (Naples), Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Nigeria) and more. Digging Deeper provides short bibliographies for further reading, and The Playlist links to curated Spotify playlists of music from the featured city, country, or region. To date there have been eighteen volumes published in English, and all are shelved in Morrison Library’s travel section, waiting for their next trip.
Map of Luso-African Literary Publishers by City generated by Bee Lehman
More than 80 works of literature from Angola, Cabo Verde, and Mozambique arrived in Doe Library last week. This selection of poetry, short stories, and novels in Portuguese was made possible through a generous 3-year grant from the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) in Lisbon. The absence of Lusophone African literature from mainstream African literary studies (mostly in English and French) has been noted by contemporary scholars. These new works of post-colonial fiction and verse listed below are held by few academic libraries and reflect the UC Berkeley Library’s longstanding commitment to collect and make accessible underrepresented voices from across the world in more than 400 distinct languages. Please enjoy this curated list by book dealer Susanne Bach Books which provides a snapshot of the rich literary output from Lusophone Africa over the past three years:
100 poemas para Neto / Poetas da União dos Escritores Angolanos. Luanda, Angola: EAL – Edições de Angola, 2022.
Celebrate this May’s Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage Month with our collection of amazing authors and stories centered on AAPI people! Check out more on UCB Overdrive.
Celebrate Sri Lankan voices this Sri Lankan New Year with a curated collection of powerful stories and vibrant perspectives. All titles and more are available to read now on UC Berkeley’s OverDrive!
Discover two acclaimed Sri Lankan novels—The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, winner of the 2022 Booker Prize, and A Passage North, a Booker-shortlisted gem:
Just in time for the end of the semester, a couple hundred ebooks have recently flown in from from Spain from publishers like Akal, CSIC, Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza, Ediciones Universidad de Cantabria, Plaza y Valdés, Dickinson, Editorial Egales, Trotta Editorial, Ediciones Complutense and the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. All are available through the Digitalia Hispánica platform. Below are some highlighted from Iberoamericana Editorial Vervuert available to you wherever you may find yourselves this summer:
