Translator and editor Harold Augenbraum is the spring Franke Visiting Fellow

Harold Augenbraum, former executive director of the National Book Foundation, which presents the National Book Awards, has been named the 2017 Franke Visiting Fellow at the Whitney Humanities Center (WHC).

Augenbraum will give a lecture titled “What Translation Means: The Extent and Impact of Translation in America” at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 21, in Rm. 208 of the WHC, located at 53 Wall St. The talk is free and open to the public.

For 12 years, Augenbraum served as executive director of the National Book Foundation. He has translated, among other works, Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s “Chronicle of the Narváez Expedition” and the Filipino novelist José Rizal’s “Noli Me Tangere” and “El Filibusterismo.” In 2012, the University of Texas Press published his co-translation (with Ilan Stavans) of “The Plain in Flames” by Juan Rulfo; in 2013, Penguin Classics published his edition of the “Collected Poems of Marcel Proust.” He is currently carrying out a research project on the business of translation in the United States under a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. In 2015, Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, awarded him the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa.

The Franke Visiting Scholars and Artists Program is made possible by the generosity of Richard and Barbara Franke. The creation of this residential fellowship is intended to ensure ongoing interdisciplinary exchange and creative debate at the Whitney Humanities Center in particular and at Yale in general. The Frankes have also endowed an annual lecture series and the Franke Program in Science and the Humanities at the Whitney Humanities Center.

For more information, contact the Whitney Humanities Center at 203-432-0670 or email whitneyhumanitiescenter@yale.edu.