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Megan McDowell

Megan McDowell (Kentucky, 1978) is an American literary translator. She principally translates Spanish-language works into English.

She is known for her translations of contemporary writers such as Mariana Enriquez, Samantha Schweblin and Alejandro Zambra. Her translations have won the National Book Award for Translated Literature, the English PEN award, the Premio Valle-Inclán, and two O. Henry Prizes, and have been nominated for the International Booker Prize (four times) and the Kirkus Prize. Her short story translations have been featured in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The New York Times Magazine, Tin House, McSweeney's and Granta, among others.

Personal life

Originally from Kentucky, she studied English at DePaul University in Chicago. Upon graduation, she worked at the Dalkey Archive Press. She then moved to Chile with the intention of learning Spanish and editing translated literature. Three years later McDowell returned to the US to study a master's degree in Liberal Arts focusing on translation at UT Dallas. She then lived briefly in Salt Lake City and Durham. After that, she spent eight months in Portugal and Switzerland. Now, McDowell lives and works in Santiago de Chile.

Career

Her career started with the translation of Alejandro Zambra's The Private Lives of Trees, which she asked the author to translate personally. Since then, she has collaborated with Zambra on the translation of eight more books, including the challenging Multiple Choice (2016). McDowell has expressed her interest in working directly with the writers she translates to provide the most faithful translation possible.

Although McDowell has translated a couple of books from peninsular Spanish — Among the Hedges (2021) by Sara Mesa and Divorce Is in the Air (2016) by Gonzalo Torné — she feels more comfortable translating hispanoamerican authors since she is more familiar, not only with these dialects, but also with cultural references. For this reason, she has repeatedly translated the same handful of authors.

Translations

Recognition and awards

References