Olivia Lott

Olivia is ABD in Hispanic Studies and a Spencer T. and Ann W. Olin Fellow. She completed her BA in Literature in Spanish at Kenyon College in 2015 before receiving a Fulbright Grant to Colombia. She is currently writing her dissertation, titled Radical Re/Turns: Translation and Revolution in Latin American Neo-Avant-Garde Poetics, 1959-1973, which examines the relationship between neo-vanguard poetic practices and cultural-historical archives through her concept of translation as re/turn. The project covers artistic collectives, literary journals, and poetry collections with case studies from Argentina, Chile, Cuba, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela. Olivia also earned a Graduate Certificate in Translation Studies, received the 2019 Eva Sichel Memorial Essay Prize from the Romance Languages and Literatures Department, and served as the Editorial Assistant for the Revista de Estudios Hispánicos from 2018-2019. She is the co-creator of the WashU Translators Collective.

Olivia is the translator of Lucía Estrada’s Katabasis (forthcoming Eulalia Books, 2020) and the co-translator of Soleida Ríos’s The Dirty Text (Kenning Editions, 2018). She regularly publishes translations of Latin American poetry and reviews of poetry in translation. She co-edits the feature, Poesía en acción on Action Book’s blog. Twitter: @oliviamlott