Wednesday, March 15, 2023 • 7 pm
Klapper Hall 710
https://www.facebook.com/events/173809778740977

Please join us for our first in-person event of the semester, as we celebrate MFA alum Ellis Ging winning the Loose Translations Prize from Hanging Loose Press! Rather than host a huge, formal reading, we wanted MFA students and members of literary community to be able to sit down with Ging and ask him about his work translating Alfonso Sastre’s Cells of Terror, so this event will take the form of an intimate salon, where Ellis will read and then engage us all in Translation Terror (and joy)!

Details about the book and the author are below. All guests from outside of the CUNY community will have to show ID and proof of vaccination at the main security gate on Kissena Blvd. before entering campus.

Hope to see you there!

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The Cells of Terror, written by Alfonso Sastre and translated by Ellis Ging, consists of twenty-four stories, all very short, scientifically formulated about the cells that are the origin of terror—which is to say, about a few of the key situations that sow in the hearts of human beings the monstrous seed of terror. As told by a variety of narrators whose perspective is both unflinching and darkly humorous, these tales encompass the visceral, the metaphysical, and the political in horror.

Alfonso Sastre (1926–2021) was a Spanish author best known as a Generation of ’50 playwright, though he also wrote prose, poetry, essays, and screenplays. His work received numerous awards, including the Premio Nacional de Teatro (for La taberna fantástica) and the Premio Nacional de Literatura Dramática (for Jenofa Juncal). Sastre is also known for his leftist political activism: his opposition to the dictatorship of Francisco Franco and support of Basque independence.

Ellis Ging is a librarian and translator based in New York with a particular interest in the horror genre. He has an MFA in Literary Translation as well as an MLS from Queens College. He is winner of the 2022 Loose Translation Prize from Hanging Loose Books.