George Henson, PhD
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unpoetaloco.bsky.social
George Henson, PhD
@unpoetaloco.bsky.social
Translator of Elena Poniatowska, Sergio Pitol, Luis Jorge Boone, Alberto Chimal, Abel Posse, & others. Six titles with Deep Vellum, soon to be seven. I teach translation at the Middlebury Institute at Monterey.
Pinned
I was today years old when I learned that Elena dedicated something to me.
I should probably stop taking credit for my former student @michellemirabella.bsky.social, but I'll never stop celebrating and promoting her. literalmagazine.com/too-much-text/
Too Much Text - Literal Magazine
Translated by Michelle Mirabella My work is writing—I write for media outlets, I write my own books, I write books credited to others, and lately I have been seeing this feedback: “Too much text.” In ...
literalmagazine.com
September 24, 2025 at 1:52 AM
Thank you, Frank Garrett, for your kind words, which mean the world to me.
Rereading bits of Pitol ten years later and all the more convinced that the English translation by @unpoetaloco.bsky.social really was a transformational event in world literature … if only the English-speaking/reading world were interested in and ready for transformation.
September 23, 2025 at 4:03 AM
Middlebury College will shutter the Middlebury Institute at Monterey as of June 2027.
August 28, 2025 at 10:20 PM
Tim Miller is looking especially sexy today.
August 6, 2025 at 8:19 PM
I'm revising my translation of Abel Posse's The Passion according to Eva, and I'm remembering when Carlos Fuentes told me he lost his virginity in Buenos Aires, listening to Eva Duarte (not yet Perón) in a radionovela.
July 6, 2025 at 9:45 PM
Reposted by George Henson, PhD
“When you finish reading this beautifully crafted memoir, and I hope you do, my guess is you’ll believe—as I do—that a happy ending, as in the rom-coms Gomez grew up watching, is just over the horizon.” – George Henson

@unpoetaloco.bsky.social

worldliteraturetoday.org/2025/may/all...
June 23, 2025 at 1:30 PM
June 12, 2025 at 10:15 PM
June 12, 2025 at 10:09 PM
So, is “genre-defying” now a genre?
May 23, 2025 at 7:22 PM
I'd like to wish my dear Elena a happy 93rd birthday. I took this photo four years ago outside her home in Chimalistac just after she celebrated 89. I'm looking forward to seeing her next week.
May 19, 2025 at 5:30 PM
Honored to have been invited to brunch tomorrow with Yuko Matsuoka, Japanese translator of the Harry Potter books and Middlebury Institute commencement speaker.
May 17, 2025 at 3:17 AM
Honored to serve with such esteemed colleagues.
ALTA is delighted to spotlight the judges of the 2025 awards!

You can learn about the judges and our awards on this page: literarytranslators.org/awards/

We are honored to have these judges serving in 2025 on the following prize juries:
May 14, 2025 at 2:27 AM
I reviewed @otroedgargomez.bsky.social's gender-bending, genre-defying memoir, Alligator Tears, for @worldlittoday.bsky.social. worldliteraturetoday.org/2025/may/all...
Alligator Tears: A Memoir in Essays by Edgar Gomez
Crown. 2025. 256 pages.
worldliteraturetoday.org
April 25, 2025 at 8:30 PM
Reposted by George Henson, PhD
Hace tiempo escribí sobre el enorme poder cultural que tenía #JKRowling antes de volverse francamente extremista, y sobre cómo lo perdió.
literalmagazine.com/el-nombre-de...
El nombre de Kingsley Shacklebolt - Literal Magazine
¿Qué es el poder? Los intentos de responder esa pregunta deben ocupar millones de páginas. Yo no podría agregar nada nuevo al tema: no soy filósofo ni politólogo. Pero tal vez pueda ilustrar un caso p...
literalmagazine.com
April 17, 2025 at 8:52 PM
So much to say about the PEN/Faulkner short list. Actually, the list says it all: Indie presses don't publish great literature, and husband/wife competition is the new big thing now.
March 3, 2025 at 8:18 PM
Cuba's communist government can't feed its people, but it can operate fully stocked supermarkets for "convenient, safe and secure shopping with everything you need in one place" if you have US dollars.
February 15, 2025 at 1:22 AM
Dear @jaygraber001.bsky.social, can you please create a platform for disaffected Facebook users? Thank you!
January 7, 2025 at 6:30 PM
This arrived today, all the way from Tulsa to Pacific Grove, the first issue of Nimrod under Boris Dralyuk’s editorship. Congrats, Boris!
January 4, 2025 at 8:29 PM
The deadbeat, kleptocratic, COD Cuban regime is doing everything it can to separate Cubans from their US dollars, like opening supermarkets where Cubans can buy food that they can't buy--and couldn't afford--in other outlets with Cuban pesos.
January 3, 2025 at 9:29 PM
I've been grading all day (grades due tomorrow), and now I'm going to relax and read the last two chapters/essays of Alligator Tears by @otroedgargomez.bsky.social.
January 2, 2025 at 4:34 AM
Does anyone else want to know who "C" is in @otroedgargomez.bsky.social's memoir Alligator Tears? Or am I the only one who hasn't figured it out?
December 31, 2024 at 7:28 PM
Just finished the first draft, 97,386 words, of Abel Posse's The Passion according to Eva.
December 28, 2024 at 10:17 PM
"Yes, I believe that was Eva’s last outing. And like everything about her: It was a farewell in grand style, with her necklace of rubies and diamonds, the escort of Grenadiers, and her ineffable aura of French perfume. All this not to conceal her illness, but rather to throw death off the scent."
December 27, 2024 at 3:58 AM
@levivonk.bsky.social Loved your review (takedown?) of América del Norte.
December 23, 2024 at 5:29 PM