Hélène Cixous's Angst and Claude Cahun's Cancelled Confessions: A Workshop on Translating Two 'Difficult' Stylists Over Time
Please register via Eventbrite, here.
Sophie Lewis's new translation of Cixous's pivotal fiction Angst came out this year, forty years after the book's first translation was published. Susan De Muth published her new translation of Cahun's Aveux non avenus in 2024 as Cancelled Confessions, also following others' attempts at translating this twisty, unboxable text. In this workshop, De Muth and Lewis will offer a brief tour of their thinking and approaches to their texts, and will then invite participants to engage directly with the texts. The workshop will include comparisons with previous existing translations and discussion of their influence.
No prior reading is necessary but some would be helpful. A fair knowledge of French is important.
Sophie Lewis is a prize-winning translator from French and Portuguese. Her new translation of Angst by Hélène Cixous was published by Silver Press in March 2026.
Susan de Muth is the translator of Claude Cahun's Cancelled Confessions and Uranian Games and several other Surrealist and Dada texts.
