The Black and White Review: "A discussion with Michael Reynolds, editor-in-chief of Europa Editions."
Taylor Davis-Van Atta is the editor of Something Else, a blog dedicated to the review and criticism of newly translated literature. He has worked for three years for Hunger Mountain Journal of the Arts and will take over as nonfiction editor of upstreet magazine. This week he interviews our editor-in-chief Michael Reynolds to discuss the importance of literature in translation.
Taylor Davis-Van Atta: Europa Editions opened its doors in 2005 as an American imprint of the Italian house Edizioni E/O. Two-thirds of its catalog is work in translation, which is remarkable, more so considering Europa is not a nonprofit. It has staked its existence on sales. If the mass-market US publishing industry’s perception of America as an isolationist culture were true, Europa would not still be in business today. As much as commercial publishers deny it, there is in fact curiosity and interest in the American readership to learn more about other countries and international writers, and the success of a handful of small, translation-focused US publishers stand as proof of this enthusiasm.
Michael Reynolds: I agree entirely! When we first began, many people (among them friends and colleagues) thought we were crazy, that a publisher doing mostly translated fiction was doomed to failure. The odds of success, according to these naysayers, were perhaps even lower than those for a publisher of only translated fiction. Such a publisher, the logic went, has a niche market that it can concentrate on and count on. A publisher that is not one thing (a typical US publisher that does almost no translated work) or the other (a specialist publisher doing only translation), and is not a non-profit publisher relying heavily on grants and public and/or private funding, is unlikely to succeed. Yet this unusual composite nature has been an enormous boon for us. It has helped us to create a strong identity; it has kept us from being perceived as a niche publisher, which would have made things difficult for us commercially and thus economically; and it has kept the doors open to writers working in English, some of whom, like Jane Gardam, have done very well.
As far as the lack of translated fiction on the US market goes, in my opinion the major obstacles are in the publishing industry itself and not in the American reader’s willingness or otherwise to give foreign fiction a shot.
Read the Complete Interview on Something Else
Taylor Davis-Van Atta: Europa Editions opened its doors in 2005 as an American imprint of the Italian house Edizioni E/O. Two-thirds of its catalog is work in translation, which is remarkable, more so considering Europa is not a nonprofit. It has staked its existence on sales. If the mass-market US publishing industry’s perception of America as an isolationist culture were true, Europa would not still be in business today. As much as commercial publishers deny it, there is in fact curiosity and interest in the American readership to learn more about other countries and international writers, and the success of a handful of small, translation-focused US publishers stand as proof of this enthusiasm.
Michael Reynolds: I agree entirely! When we first began, many people (among them friends and colleagues) thought we were crazy, that a publisher doing mostly translated fiction was doomed to failure. The odds of success, according to these naysayers, were perhaps even lower than those for a publisher of only translated fiction. Such a publisher, the logic went, has a niche market that it can concentrate on and count on. A publisher that is not one thing (a typical US publisher that does almost no translated work) or the other (a specialist publisher doing only translation), and is not a non-profit publisher relying heavily on grants and public and/or private funding, is unlikely to succeed. Yet this unusual composite nature has been an enormous boon for us. It has helped us to create a strong identity; it has kept us from being perceived as a niche publisher, which would have made things difficult for us commercially and thus economically; and it has kept the doors open to writers working in English, some of whom, like Jane Gardam, have done very well.
As far as the lack of translated fiction on the US market goes, in my opinion the major obstacles are in the publishing industry itself and not in the American reader’s willingness or otherwise to give foreign fiction a shot.
Read the Complete Interview on Something Else