About

I am a translator of Portuguese to English, working primarily with nonfiction titles. My published works include "Banzeiro Òkòtó: The Amazon as the Center of the World," by Eliane Brum (2023, Graywolf/Indigo/Spiracle); "The Collector of Leftover Souls," by Eliane Brum (2019, Graywolf/Granta), which was long listed for a National Book Award in Translation and a finalist for the Jan Michalski Prize for International Literature; and "Zika: From the Brazilian Backlands to Global Threat," by Debora Diniz (2017, ZED). My translations have appeared in the New York Times, Guardian, Harper's, Orion, Granta, Glossalalia, and Paris Review. I lived in Brazil for 23 years before returning to my native Wisconsin.

Featured Work

Banzeiro Òkòtó: The Amazon as the Center of the World, by Eliane Brum

2023
Cover of the book "Banzeiro Òkòtó." Across the center: close-up black and white photograph of a tree trunk with gash resembling a mouth. It is framed by a wide blue strip at the top and orange stripe at the bottom.

In lyrical, impassioned prose, Eliane Brum recounts her move from São Paulo to Altamira, a city along the Xingu River that has been devastated by the construction of one of the largest dams in the world. In community with the human and more-than-human world of the Amazon, Brum seeks to “reforest” herself while building relationships with forest peoples who carry both the scars and the resistance of the forest in their bodies. Weaving together the lived stories of the region and its history of violent corruption and destruction, Banzeiro Òkòtó is a call for radical change, for the creation of a new kind of human being capable of facing the potential extinction of our species. In it, Brum reveals the direct links between structural inequities rooted in gender, race, class, and even species, and the suffering that capitalism and climate breakdown wreak on those who are least responsible for them.

Other Works

  • The Collector of Leftover Souls, by Eliane Brum (Graywolf/Granta)

    2019

  • Zika: From Brazilian Backlands to Global Threat, by Debora Diniz (ZED)

    2017

  • Activist Biology: The National Museum, Politics, and Nation Building in Brazil, by Regina Horta Duarte (University of Arizona Press)

    2016

  • The Sanitation of Brazil: Nation, State, and Public Health, 1889-1930, by Gilberto Hochman (University of Illinois Press)

    2016

  • The Devil and the Land of the Holy Cross, by Laura de Mello e Souza (University of Texas Press, Austin)

    2003

  • Our Immoral Soul: A Manifesto of Spiritual Disobedience, by Nilton Bonder (Shambhala Press)

    2001

  • Yiddishe Kop: Creative Problem Solving in Jewish Learning, Lore and Humor, by Nilton Bonder (Shambhala Press)

    1999

Awards and Recognition

  • Long listed for the National Book Award in Translated Fiction in 2019 for "Collector of Leftover Souls," by Eliane Brum (Graywolf/Granta, 2019)
  • A finalist for the Jan Michalski Prize in international literature in 2022 for "Collector of Leftover Souls," by Eliane Brum (Graywolf/Grant, 2019)