The Observer Translation Project

Jean Harris,director of The Observer Translation Project,is a novelist and essayist now living in Bucharest, Romania. Her most recent novel is Diffidence (Spuyten Duyvil, 2004). She has translated Romanian fairy tales, fiction and poetry. She holds a Ph.D. in British and American literature from Rutgers and has published fiction and literary criticism. She has published psychoanalytic studies with Jay Harris, including The Roots of Artifice: A Study in Literary Creativity (New York: Human Sciences Press, 1981) and The One-Eyed Doctor: Psychological Origins of Freud's Works (New York: Jason Aronson, 1984). She co-edits the online English language edition of Observator Cultural.  She has published articles on the art of translation, including “The Observer Talks with Michael Moore, Andrei Codrescu, Julian Semilian and Carmen Firan” and “A Short Guide to Romanian Literature for the American Audience.” She worked with Constantin Virgil Bănescu on the selection from “The Boars Were Mild”/ Mistreţii erau blânzi from Iarna Bărbaţilor / Men in Winter by Ştefan Bănulescu, that opens the first issue of The Observer Translation Project. The rendition into English has been awarded a translation grant from the International Center for Writing and Translation at the University of California, Irvine for 2007-2008. Current projects include a translation of Corpuri de iluminat / Dark Bodies by Stelian Tănase and the compilation of an anthology of contemporary Romanian fiction for Absinthe: New European Writing. Translations by Jean Harris have appeared at Exquisite Corpse (www.corpse.org)Words Without Borders (www.wordswithoutborders.org),  Plural and Observator Cultural (available at (www.observatorcultural.ro).Contact: jean.harris@observatorcultural.ro