The Turkish Literature in Translation Reading Group aims to gather those who are interested in Turkish literature at UT together. It meets every month throughout the semester and the discussions are held in English. This semester, due to COVID-19 circumstances, all of our discussions will be held virtually, through Zoom. The meetings are open to the entire UT community, as well as interested individuals outside UT.

Fall 2020 will be devoted to three well-known Turkish novels: Orhan Pamuk’s Snow, Sevgi Soysal’s Noontime in Yenisehir and Kemal Varol’s Wûf. The group's discussion of each novel will include a Q&A session with its English translator.

We will focus on the Turkish female writer Sevgi Soysal’s Noontime in Yenisehir in our second meeting. An award-winning modern classic of Turkish literature by one of Turkey's most beloved authors, Noontime in Yenişehir brings together apparently disparate lives in a clever, prism-like plot. It all begins, and ends, with the collapse of a poplar tree in downtown Ankara. The story is based on three people: Ali, Doğan and Olcay. Soysal builds the story on this triangle and vividly depicts the struggle between the older generation who were content with the new post-Ottoman Turkey and who are disturbed by changes sought and brought on by the rebellious young generation. In this unforgettable, epic portrait of 1960s Turkey, the personal and political are intertwined in a questioning of what fidelity means—to sibling, lover, country and cause. The novel’s English translator, Amy Marie Spangler, will also be with us to talk about the translation process and the novel itself.

Amy Marie Spangler (b. 1978, Circleville, Ohio, USA) is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College, with B.A. degrees in Near Eastern and Classical Archaeology and German Language and Literature. She is co-found of AnatoliaLit Agency, where she represents authors (mostly) from Turkey. A translator, primarily from Turkish into English, from 2007 until 2015 she headed the Fiction Translation Group of the Cunda International Workshop for Translators of Turkish Literature (http://tecca.boun.edu.tr), and she has taught in the Translation Studies Departments of Boğaziçi University and and Okan University in Istanbul. Her published book translations include The City in Crimson Cloak by Asli Erdogan (Soft Skull, 2007), Noontime in Yenişehir by Sevgi Soysal (Milet, 2014), and Dawn by Selahattin Demirtaş (co-translated with Kate Ferguson, Hogarth, 2019). Co-editor and co-translator of Istanbul Noir (Akashic Books, 2008), Spangler’s English translations of Turkish short stories have been published in various anthologies and magazines.