Alexis Levitin
Translator/Writer
Photo: Nick Levitin
ABOUT
Alexis Levitin has published 51 books in translation, mostly poetry from Portugal, Brazil, and Ecuador. In addition to twelve books by Portugal's Eugénio de Andrade and five books by Brazil's Salgado Maranhão, his work includes Clarice Lispector’s Soulstorm (from New Directions) and Rosa Alice Branco's Cattle of the Lord (from Milkweed Editions). He is a recipient of two NEA translation fellowships and has served as a Fulbright Lecturer at the Universities of Oporto and Coimbra, Portugal, The Catholic University in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and the Federal University of Santa Catarina, in Brazil. In addition, he has held translation residencies at the Banff Center, Canada, The European Translators Collegium in Straelen, Germany (twice), and the Rockefeller Foundation Study Center in Bellagio, Italy.
Recent books include Mapping the Tribe by Salgado Maranhão (Spuyten Duyvil, 2021), Consecration of the Wolves by Salgado Maranhão (Bitter Oleander Press, 2021), Gazing Through Water by Astrid Cabral (Aliform Publishers, 2021), Furrows of Thirst by Eugénio de Andrade, his last collection of poetry (Dialogos Books, 2022), Consecration of the Aleph Bet by Leonor Scliar-Cabral (Ben Yehuda Press, 2025) and A Hunger So Honed by Tracy K. Smith, Co-Translated into Portuguese with Salgado Maranhão (Malê Editora, 2025). His translation of Astrid Cabral's Spotlight on the Word will be published in 2026 by World Poetry Publishers.
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On Oct. 4, 2020, his translations of poems by Astrid Cabral and Salgado Maranhão appeared in a special feature on the Amazon in the New York Times.
During the fear-tinged isolation engendered by the pandemic, he began to write short stories. So far, 66 of them have been accepted by literary magazines such as Bitter Oleander, Latin American Literary Review, and Rosebud, and a collection of his chess-related stories, The Last Ruy Lopez: Tales from the Royal Game, came out in 2023 from Russell Enterprises.
PUBLICATIONS
Some of my translations.
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Non-Translations
Fiction Scholarship
Works Seeking Publishers
1) Herberto Helder (Portugal) – The Endless Poem
2) Gastão Cruz (Portugal) – Selected Poems
3) Ruy Belo (Portugal) – Selected Poems
4) Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen (Portugal) - Selected Poems
5) Fiama Hasse Pais Brandao (Portugal) - Landscape Being Born (Poetry)
6) Salgado Maranhão (Brazil) – Beneath the Gaze of Will Barnet
7) Leonor Scliar-Cabral (Brazil - The Book of Joseph (Poetry)
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Interviews
For additional interviews with Prof. Levitin, please see: