Translator Deanna Cachoian-Schanz was awarded one of the prestigious PEN Translates grants earlier this year for her work on Shushan Avagyan’s Girq-anvernakir: a rich, experimental novel that speaks to repressions, literary legacy, and the expansive collisions between disparate writings, voices, times, and lives. Soon to be released as A Book, Untitled through Tilted Axis, Avagyan’s work is emblematic of literature as an act of congregation and communality in giving voice to the silenced, and in this following interview, Cachoian-Schanz speaks on how translation furthers that textual power. Interviewed by Xiao Yue Shan.
Asymptote