From Lightning’s Strike by Juana Karen Peñate: Event with the Translators

Presenting an evening with the translators of From Lightning's Strike by Juana Karen Peñate: Carol Rose Little and Charlotte Friedman, in conversation with Malik Thompson!

From Lightning's Strike is a collection of lyric poems rooted in ancestral Ch'ol Mayan culture and animated by vivid images of the natural world. These multivocal poems recall the work of Mary Oliver, Joy Harjo, and Adrienne Rich. Honest, searching, and assertively female, Peñate speaks from and about the body, celebrating an intimate bond with nature while confronting the personal and the political. Carol Rose Little and Charlotte Friedman, linguist and poet, respectively, worked in partnership to bring this unique voice to English-speaking audiences.

Hope to see you there for this exciting conversation crossing cultures, perspectives, and ways of writing.

Order FROM LIGHTNING'S STRIKE here!

Juana Karen Peñate is a poet, writer, translator, educator, and cultural promoter from Emiliano Zapata, Tumbalá, Chiapas, Mexico. She has authored several books of poetry in Ch’ol with self-translations into Spanish, including Mi nombre ya no es silencio (Coneculta, 2002) and Ipusik’al Matye’lum / Heart of a Wild Land (Pluralia, 2013). In 2020, she was awarded the Premio de Literaturas Indígenas de América for her collection Isoñil Ja’al / Danza de la Lluvia, published by the University of Guadalajara.

Carol Rose Little is an assistant professor of linguistics at the University of Oklahoma whose work centers on the Ch’ol language. She learned Ch’ol through her ongoing fieldwork beginning in 2015 in Ch’ol-speaking communities in Chiapas where she has spent extended periods over the past decade. She has also served as an interpreter for Ch’ol speakers in federal and state courts in the United States.

Charlotte Friedman is a poet, author and teacher. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net and widely published in literary journals. She is the author of The Girl Pages: A Handbook of the Best Resources for Strong, Confident, Creative Girls (Hyperion). Friedman taught narrative medicine at Columbia University for ten years and in hospitals in New York and Jerusalem.

Malik Thompson (he/they) is a Black queer person from Washington, DC. Having worked in independent bookstores for many years, he is also the former Co-Chair of OutWrite DC and has taught workshops for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Hurston/Wright Foundation, and other organizations. His work has been published in the Cincinnati Review, Denver Quarterly, Hayden's Ferry Review, and elsewhere. He has received fellowships and residencies from organizations including Cave Canem, Lambda Literary, the Anderson Center, and Monson Arts. He can be found on IG via the handle @latesummerstar.