3 Questions with Kathleen Davis Sullivan
KATHLEEN DAVIS SULLIVAN is a writer and translator from New York currently based in Northwest Arkansas. She is pursuing an MFA in literary translation at the University of Arkansas and serves as the director of Arkansas Writers in the Schools.
Associate Editor Zêdan talks to Kathleen Davis Sullivan about her work in Issue 77.
What is your story of becoming a translator from the Arabic Language?
I studied Arabic all four years of college and loved the language and its literature. But at that time, I wasn’t really aware of literary translation—like many people, I simply had not considered how literature in one language is reborn in another. I spent several years working in an unrelated field, but never lost my love for Arabic. Meanwhile, I began writing more seriously on my own, taking classes and working on some original fiction. I eventually realized that literary translation might be a way to combine my love of languages with my love of writing. I decided to pursue it more seriously by applying to MFA programs, and I am currently in my third year of the University of Arkansas’s Program in Creative Writing and Translation.
How did you come across Salha Obaid’s work and what compelled you to translate this story?
I first came across her work through the International Prize for Arabic Fiction. Her novel Circle of Spices was longlisted in 2024 (the English translation, by Sawad Hussain and Nour Jaljuli, was just published). I wanted to learn more about her work, so I borrowed a few of her short story collections through my university's library (many thanks to Inter-Library Loan). I really enjoyed her writing, so I reached out to ask about translating some of her short fiction. She sent me this particular story, which did not appear in her collections but had been published in an online magazine. I absolutely loved it and knew I wanted to work on it. The voice is so unique, and I particularly enjoy how the prose mirrors the narrator’s state of mind.
What challenges did you experience in translating this story?
It’s quite a short piece but it packs a punch. There is a hypnotic quality to the prose, and I wanted to capture the way momentum builds throughout each paragraph. I felt that keeping the sentences as long as they were in the original didn’t work as well in English, so I played a lot with punctuation and where to break the sentence. I also thought about varying the rhythm of the sentence so that certain words would land. This story demands a lot from the reader, so I had to find a balance between preserving the ambiguity of the original while giving enough footholds to bring the reader along. I had the opportunity to workshop an early draft, and the feedback I received was extremely helpful in finding that balance.