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Tyrell Haberkorn​ awarded NEA Literature Translation Fellowship​

The Professor of Southeast Asian Studies wins a $25,000 Literature Translation Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts for her work translating All They Could Do To Us, a memoir by Thai author and political prisoner Prontip Mankhong.

February 5, 2021
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Tyrell Haberkorn, a Professor of Southeast Asian Studies, was recently awarded a Literature Translation Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).

Tyrell Haberkorn

The $25,000 fellowship recognizes Haberkorn's work on the translation of  All They Could Do To Us, a prison memoir by Thai author Prontip Mankhong, from Thai into English, and is the first literature translation fellowship given for Thai since the inception of the award.

Mankhong was imprisoned for two years between 2014 and 2016 for lèse majesté (insulting the Thai monarch King Bhumibol) in relation to directing and performing in a theatre play. Haberkorn and Mankhong first met when Mankhong was still imprisoned, because Haberkorn translated a set of fables she wrote. Haberkorn also worked on her case for PEN, an international organization that works to protect authors and the freedom of open expression in literature. Once Mankhong was released, she immediately began writing a memoir, which grew to 880 pages. The remarkable memoir–at turns funny and devastating, often all at once–was published in 2019. In 2020 a short excerpt was published by the Asian American Writer’s Workshop.

“Translating  Prontip's memoir is the most humbling, and inspiring, project I have taken up," says Haberkorn. "What makes the book at once both exciting and challenging is that she refuses the easy categories of either victim of the regime or hero of dissent. She writes in a voice at once playful and wise--a sassy teenager combined with the sharpest grandmother on the block-- and makes up her own words when the existing Thai language is insufficient.”

For more information about the NEA's Literature Translation Fellowship, follow this link.