Lawrence Schimel
Lawrence Schimel
Lawrence Schimel writes in both Spanish and English and has published over 120 books in many different genres–including fiction, poetry, non-fiction, and comics–and for both children and adults. His books have won the Lambda Literary Award (twice), the Crystal Kite Award from the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, a White Raven from the International Youth
Library in Munich, and other honors. His writings have been translated into over forty languages, including Icelandic, Maltese, Farsi, Kurdish, Basque, German, and Japanese.
In addition to his own writing, he is a prolific literary translator, contributing regularly to Asymptote, Words Without Borders, Modern Poetry in Translation, Latin American Literature Today, Pleiades, Guernica, Círculo de poesía, and other journals. Into Spanish he has translated works such as the graphic novel They Called Us Enemy by George Takei (Top Shelf), poetry collection Collective Amnesia by Koleka Putuma (Flores Raras, with Arrate Hidalgo), and the essays The Art of Cruelty and Bluets both by Maggie Nelson (Tres
Puntos).
Recent poetry book translations into English include the poetry collections: Destruction of the Lover by Luis Panini (Pleiades Press), Bomarzo by Elsa Cross (Shearsman), Impure Acts by Ángelo Néstore (Indolent Books, finalist for the Thom Gunn Award), I Offer My Heart as a Target by Johanny Vázquez Paz (Akashic, winner of the Paz Prize), Itinerary of Forgetting by Nelson Simón (Skull & Wind), Niños: Poems for the Lost Children of Chile by María José Ferrada (Eerdmans, winner of the Paterson Prize and Honorable Mention for the Américas Award) and Hatchet by Carmen Boullosa (White Pine, winner of the Cliff Becker Book Prize in Translation).
Honors for his translations include a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship (with Layla Benitez-James), a PEN Translates Award from English PEN (twice), Highly Commended in the UK’s CLiPPA for children’s poetry, a Lambda Literary Award finalist, an Eisner Award finalist, a residence at the Banff International Literary Translation Centre, and translation grants from FONCA/Conaculta in Mexico, Camões Institute Portugal, the Latvian Writer’s Union, and others.
He has lived in Madrid, Spain since 1999.