Ani Gjika: The Language of Freedom

Ani Gjika is an Albanian-born writer who moved to the U.S. when she was eighteen. She is the award-winning author and literary translator of eight books and chapbooks of poetry, among them Bread on Running Waters (Fenway Press, 2013), a finalist for the 2011 Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize and 2011 May Sarton New Hampshire Book Prize. Most recently, she is the recipient of the New Immigrant Writing Prize for her memoir, 

An Unruled Body, (Restless Books, 2023), which was a 2023 Foreword INDIES winner and on the 2024 Massachusetts Book Award longlist for nonfiction. 

Gjika is a recipient of awards and fellowships from the NEA, English PEN, Robert Fitzgerald Translation Prize, the Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship, and others. For more, visit her website at: https://www.anigjika.com

We discussed Ani's journey as a bilingual writer, her shift from Albanian to English and the complex layers of identity that come with writing across languages. Ani spoke about womanhood in her work, the struggle with verbal expression and the freedom she finds in writing. She also shared the importance of a mother tongue, the challenges of translation, and advice for fellow translingual authors.