Event 7: Translating South Asian Literature – A Feminist Approach

Date and venue: Saturday 11 October 2025 @ The Exchange, 3 Centenary Square, Birmingham, B1 2DR

A translation workshop at the Birmingham Literature Festival 2025.

With a focus on contemporary South Asian literature, this workshop explored intersectional feminist translation practices. Led by Kavita Bhanot, through creative exercises, participants considered questions such as: Is feminist translation a matter of identity or a matter of practice? How does the lived experience we bring to a text influence our understanding of feminist translation?

Kavita Bhanot is a writer, translator, editor, researcher and organiser. She wrote the landmark essay ‘Decolonise not Diversify’ in 2015. She is the editor of three short-story collections, including Too Asian, not Asian Enough (Tindal Street, 2011) and The Book of Birmingham (Comma, 2018), and co-editor of Violent Phenomena: 21 Essays on Translation (Tilted Axis, 2022) with translator Jeremy Tiang. Her translation of Anjali Kajal’s Hindi stories Ma is Scared and Other Stories, winner of a PEN Translates Award in 2021, was published with Comma Press in 2023. Kavita founded Literature Must Fall and Jaag: Panjabi and Pahari-Pothwari Language and Literature Festival in Birmingham. She is currently writing a book Literature Must Fall: Resisting Literary Supremacy (Pluto Press), most recently taught Creative Writing at Birmingham University and was Leverhulme ECR Fellow at Leicester University. 

This event was presented in partnership with English PEN and was subsidised as part of English PEN’s programme for International Translation Day 2025.