Excerpt from the review: "Readers interested in this first-ever translation of Ronald M. Schernikau’s SMALLTOWNNOVELLA should start with Ben Miller’s thoroughgoing afterword for the volume, published over at the Baffler. In it, he lays out much fascinating backstory...
Events at the Trinity Centre for Translation in Dublin
Tuesday, 30 June 2026
On 30 June, translator Rachel McNicholl and I discussed our translations of a passage from ‚Essen‘ (Food), a culinary biography by German-Russian writer Alina Bronsky. This event was kindly supported by the Goethe-Institut Irland.
In 2026 Trinity College Dublin celebrated its 250th anniversary of modern language teaching. As part of the celebrations, they hosted a series of translation slams with the generous support of the Polish Embassy in Ireland, Instituto Cervantes Dublin and the Goethe-Institut Irland.
„At these slam events, we give two acclaimed translators the same text to translate and ask them not to confer with one another. We then bring the translators together to discuss and compare their final translations. This translation slam will be of interest to anyone with an interest in translation, and no specific knowledge of German is required.“
On 1 July, Frank Wynne and I talked about what it meant to bring a forgotten queer classic back to life in a new language. We discussed SMALLTOWNNOVELLA by Ronald M. Schernikau, which was a cult debut novel that had to be reprinted within days of its publication in 1980s West Germany, and yet it has remained unknown to Anglophone readers for over four decades. Ugly Duckling Presse in New York published it as part of their lost literature series in 2025. It can be ordered here.