Is That My Voice? with Meera Ghanshamdas, Daniel Hahn & Jon Cho-Polizzi

Where are the voices from around the world? Who gives a voice to the great works that are not written in English.

Brighton Book Festival is making space for the translated novels and those who do the work. Join us to hear how these books are discovered and the importance of translated literature for us all.

Thursday June 19th | 7pm 

Meera Ghanshamdas is Co-Director of Round Table Books, an award winning bookshop located in Brixton. The bookshop was founded by indie publisher Knights O f in 2019 after successfully raising more than £30,000 in crowdfunding to turn its then pop-up initiative into a permanent space. Round Table Books exists to celebrate underrepresented children’s books, writers and illustrators, curating and stocking books from the widest variety of UK and Irish publishers possible.

Daniel Hahn is the author of a number of works of non-fiction, including the history book The Tower Menagerie, and one of the editors of The Ultimate Book Guide, a series of reading guides for children and teenagers,the first volume of which won the Blue Peter Book Award. Other titles include Happiness Is a Watermelon on Your Head (a picture-book for children), The Oxford Guide to Literary Britain and Ireland (a reference book), brief biographies of the poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Percy Bysshe Shelley, and a new edition of The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature.

Hahn was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2020 Birthday Honours for services to literature.

Jon Cho-Polizzi is a translator of contemporary German literature and an assistant professor of German at the University of Michigan. He grew up in Northern California and studied Literature, European History, and Translation in his home state at Santa Cruz and Berkeley, as well as in Heidelberg, Germany. His scholarship and translations highlight the diversity of voices in recent German literature, with a focus on migration and multilingualism in the Berlin-based literary scene. His translation of Sharon Dodua Otoo's Ada's Realm was long-listed for the Dublin Literary Award, and his translation of Max Czollek's De-Integrate: A Jewish Survival Guide for the 21st Century was awarded the prestigious Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize in 2024. Jon splits his time living and working between California, Michigan, and Berlin.