Photo credit: Tonatiuh Ambrosetti 

Elisabeth Jaquette is a translator from Arabic and Executive Director of Words Without Borders. 
 
Her translation of Minor Detail by Adania Shibli (Fitzcarraldo/New Directions) was a finalist for the National Book Awards and longlisted for the International Booker Prize. Other translations include Thirteen Months of Sunrise by Rania Mamoun (a finalist for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation) and The Queue by Basma Abdel Aziz (nominated for the Best Translated Book Award and TA First Translation Prize).

Elisabeth has taught translation at Bread Loaf Translators' Conference and Hunter College, among other places, and was a judge for the 2019 National Book Award in Translated Literature. Her work has been supported by the Jan Michalski Foundation, PEN/Heim Translation Fund, and several English PEN Translates Awards.

​Elisabeth has a MA from Columbia University, a BA from Swarthmore College, and was a CASA Fellow at the American University in Cairo. Formerly, she was Executive Director of the American Literary Translators Association.

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Latest publication:

My translations of stories by five groundbreaking Syrian writers appear in the most recent issue of McSweeney's Quarterly Concern. Read dazzling work by Odai Al Zoubi, Rasha Abbas, Dima Wannous, Fadwa Al-Abboud, and Somar Shehadeh, in Issue 76: Aftershocks (and get in touch to learn more about full-length works by Odai Al Zoubi & Dima Wannous!).