The Bennington Writing Seminars, the MFA in Writing Program at Bennington College, announced the launch of a new dual-genre concentration in literary translation. Applicants and current students studying fiction, nonfiction, or poetry will be able to add literary translation as a secondary concentration, lengthening the program from four to five terms.
“Bennington College has a great history as a center for the translation of literature,” said Bennington Writing Seminars Executive Director Mark Wunderlich. “We are happy to now offer instruction in literary translation in our graduate writing program. Students will now be able to spend two terms studying with some of the finest translators in the field and leave with a fully translated work.”
Bruna Dantas Lobato, a Bennington College alum and Bennington Writing Seminars faculty member and National Book Award-winning translator, designed the program to enable students to engage with a global literary community.
“We translate literature to engage with the world and its many languages, to be in conversation with and open to modes of thinking and being besides our own,” Lobato said. “Literary translation is the rewriting of a literary text in a new language and all the transformations that act entails, as the text travels to a new cultural, linguistic, and aesthetic context. Translation broadens and deepens our understanding of humanity and language, shows us there are more possibilities beyond our reach, and pushes us to challenge our own perspective. It’s thanks to translation and translators that readers aren’t cut off from the rest of the world, living in intellectual isolation.”
Bennington Banner (3/6/26)