2025 Hamid Ismailov American tour
2025-10-29 08:00 - 2025-11-24 17:00 UTC | WA
Uzbekistan’s most famous author in exile, Hamid Ismailov, is touring the United States this fall to promote his newest book in English, the National Book Award finalist We Computers: A Ghazal Novel.

Most of these events are free and open to the public. A few require registration or a ticket. Visit the links to learn more.

Oct. 29, 6:00 pm New York, NY – Words Without Borders gala – https://wordswithoutborders.org/events/the-2025-words-without-borders-gala/
Nov. 4, 5:15 pm Northfield, MN – Carleton College, with Adeeb Khalid and Shelley Fairweather-Vega – https://www.carleton.edu/calendar/?eId=usGB
Nov 9, 6:00 pm San Francisco, CA – The Sycamore, happy hour and reading with Shelley Fairweather-Vega – https://thesycamoresf.com/events
Nov. 10, 12:00 pm Palo Alto, CA – Stanford University, with Shelley Fairweather-Vega – https://dlcl.stanford.edu/events/we-computers
Nov. 12, 4:30 pm New Haven, CT – Yale University, with Shelley Fairweather-Vega – https://macmillan.yale.edu/europe/central-asia-initiative/events/2025-11-12/cai-we-computers-book-talk-hamid-ismailov-and
Nov. 13, 7:00 pm Boston, MA – Brookline Booksmith with Shelley Fairweather-Vega and Sunil Sharma – https://brooklinebooksmith.com/event/2025-11-13/hamid-ismailov-and-shelley-fairweather-vega-sunil-sharma
Nov. 14, 4:30 pm South Bend, IN – University of Notre Dame with Shelley Fairweather-Vega – https://asia.nd.edu/events/2025/11/14/presentation-of-hamid-ismailovs-new-novel-we-computers/
Nov. 17, 4:30 pm Swarthmore, PA – Swarthmore College with Shelley Fairweather-Vega – https://swatcentral.swarthmore.edu/?trumbaEmbed=view%3Devent%26eventid%3D1315322843
Nov. 18, 7:00 pm New York, NY and online – National Book Awards Finalist Reading at NYU Skirball Center – https://as.nyu.edu/departments/cwp/reading-series/FALL-2025/2025-national-book-awards-reading.html
Nov. 19, 8:00 pm New York, NY and online – National Book Awards ceremony – https://www.nationalbook.org/awards2025/
Nov. 20, 7:30 pm Washington, D.C. – ASEEES convention: Celebrating Central Asian and Southeast European Literature in Translation with Turkoslavia (conference registration required): https://aseees.org/convention/2025-convention/
Nov. 22 Miami, FL – Miami Book Fair – https://www.miamibookfair.com/

Rate-Sharing Edit-a-Thon at ALTA
2025-11-07 12:00 - 2025-11-08 13:50 (America/Los_Angeles) | Tucson Marriott University Park, Tucson, AZ, United States
The Literary Translators Division of the National Writers Union needs your help! Drop in at lunchtime on Friday or Saturday to contribute your own data to our rate-sharing tool. We’re building a tool we can use to organize translators for better pay and working conditions.

Envisioning the Perfect Contract: ALTA Panel
2025-11-08 10:45 - 12:00 UTC | Tucson Marriott University Park, Tucson, AZ, United States
I’m joining Larissa Kyzer and Allana Lieberman to discuss translation contracts at ALTA!
Literary translation is an artistic endeavor, but publishing a translation is a business transaction, ideally governed by a fair and mutually beneficial contract. Knowing basic contractual terms governing payment, rights, and deadlines empowers you as a translator. This panel will share reference materials for drafting and reviewing contracts and will feature the panelists’ real-life experiences negotiating
recent translation agreements.
We will address contracts between publisher and translator, between author and translator, and between agent and translator, with the goal of arming literary translators with the knowledge they need to ensure fair agreements. This panel is organized by members of the Translators Organizing
Committee (now the Literary Translators Division!) of the National Writers Union.

Eurasia in Translation: Shifting Canons, Shaping Contexts
2025-11-08 15:45 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Tucson Marriott University Park, Tucson, AZ, United States
I will speak with Naomi Caffee, Sabrina Jaszi, and Tatiana Filimonova on this first-ever ALTA panel dedicated to translating the literature of Eurasia.
This panel brings together translators working across multiple languages and contexts of Central Asia, the Caucasus, Eastern Europe, Siberia, and the Russian Far North, who will share their experiences creating anthologies and working with translations as educators and scholars. They will discuss the challenges of translating, contextualizing, analyzing, and canonizing literary texts from a part of the world that is often ignored in literary markets and university curricula. Speakers include contributors and editors of Tulips in Bloom: An Anthology of Central Asian Literature (Palgrave, 2024), Amanat: Women’s Writing from Kazakhstan (Gaudy Boy, 2022), Reindeer Caravan: An Anthology of Indigenous Literature from Siberia (forthcoming, Amherst College Press) and the journal Turkoslavia.

Celebrating Central Asian and Southeast European Literature in Translation with Turkoslavia
2025-11-20 19:30 - 21:00 (America/New_York) | Washington Hilton, Washington, D.C.
I’ll be reading with author Hamid Ismailov and other notable translators and writers at this ASEEES convention ancillary event.

Central Asian Literature in Translation
2026-05-08 16:00 - 18:00 (America/Chicago) | Kresge Hall, 1880 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL, United States
Central Asian literature remains one of the most vibrant yet underrepresented bodies of writing in world literature today. In this interactive workshop, translator Shelley Fairweather-Vega will explore how literature from Central Asia finds its way into English translation and why many important works still remain unknown to global readers.

The workshop will examine the often invisible processes that shape literary translation today: how certain works are selected for translation, how publishers decide what to publish, who reviews and reads translated literature, and how literary prizes, grants, and institutions influence which voices become visible internationally.
Participants will also take part in an open discussion about the future of translating Central Asian and world literature.
This workshop welcomes everyone interested in world literature, translation, and global cultural exchange. You do not need prior experience in translation to participate. Students, scholars, translators, and anyone curious about literature across languages are warmly invited.

The AI Con: Emily M. Bender in Conversation with Shelley Fairweather-Vega
2026-05-17 15:00 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Folio, the Seattle Athenaeum, Seattle, WA
Folio: The Seattle Athenaeum is delighted to welcome two Seattle authors at the intersection of language and technology for a timely conversation on the hype and realities of Artificial Intelligence.
Dr. Emily M. Bender is a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Washington and co-author of The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want, a practical guide to seeing through AI hype, questioning who benefits from it, and imagining a better path forward. Shelley Fairweather-Vega is the English-language translator of Hamid Ismailov’s We Computers, a novel in which a French poet builds a computer program capable of analyzing and generating literature, a story that uncannily anticipates our current moment.
Together, they explore the difference between pattern recognition and meaning, “ghosts” in the machine, and what literature, including a novel written decades ago, can teach us about the seduction of alleged artificial intelligence.

Violent Phenomena: Essays Toward the Future of Literary Translation
2026-06-09 19:00 - 20:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle, WA
I’ll be in discussion with Gabriella Page-Fort and Wendy Call to help celebrate the launch of the U.S. edition of this important collection. Free and open to all.
