Congratulations to Society of Fellows member Gabriella Fee, who has been co-nominated (with Prof. Dora Malech) for a PEN America award. In 2022, Fee and Malech translated Giovanna Cristina Vivinetto’s book of poetry, Dolore Minimo, from its original Italian. Fee and Malech are now up for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. Finalists will be announced in February 2023.

In Nov. 2021, five translations by Fee and Malech from Dolore Minimo appeared online in digital magazine, The Offing. Read the first poem excerpted below:

At that time everything
unfolded in known words.
Syllables counted on fingers
scanned the rhythm of the invisible.

All was within reach,
all comprehensible,
and right around the corner
the trick had not yet nested.

Poetry was a concern
of other times, a mute appeal
to the true nature of things.
So disguised as to be confused
with the games and the dolls
of childhood.

At that time there were no disasters
to ration, discrepancies
to tend beneath loose clothing,
fathers to refuse or names
to follow to the bottom of ponds.

Until the transition arrived
to turn the earth on which the step
had lingered, to tip
the bucket of toys, recalling
the invisible poetry that surrounded me.

I never knew myself
except through that child
in pain. Suddenly
so divided, so very
incomplete.

from Dolore Minimo

Fee joined the KSAS Society of Fellows in 2022–23 as a project-worker with local organization Writers in Baltimore Schools. Huge kudos to Gabriella, Malech, and Vivinetto for this tremendous honor.