For the last few years, I’ve had the pleasure of being an interviewer for the ‘Writers Aloud’ podcast produced by the Royal Literary Fund. This has given me the opportunity to go and record conversations with a range of the fascinating biographers, poets, non-fiction writers, novelists and playwrights who have held RLF fellowships.

The latest interview to be released was particularly special for me: I have wanted to meet Sarah Ardizzone since I read Just Like Tomorrow, her translation of Faïza Guène’s Kiffe kiffe demain, as my choice for France back in 2012. A translator with an impressive track record of bringing stories outside the mainstream of French literature into English, Ardizzone inspires me with her longstanding commitment to amplifying underrepresented voices and broadening the range of Francophone works available to anglophone readers. (Her translation of Bessora & Barroux’s graphic novel, Alpha: Abidjan to Garde du Nord, a Book of the month of mine back in 2019, is a great example of this.)

Released in two parts, the conversation on the podcast covers a lot of ground. The first episode focuses on the challenge of finding equivalencies for slang and dialect, the lengths Ardizzone went to in bringing Guène’s work into English and the responsibilities that come with working with literature from traditionally marginalised communities. I was particularly interested to hear about the concept of ‘dosage’ – the level of idiomatic language a writer chooses to include in their work – and the loaded significance of the double ‘f’ in Kiffe kiffe demain.

The second part draws on Ardizzone’s experiences studying with the world-renowned French acting movement coach Jacques Lecoq at his eponymous Paris theatre school and explores how performance feeds into her translations. It also touches on how a shift in the way publishers handle markers of difference on the page may reveal a greater acceptance of diversity in storytelling and the ongoing need for challenging those in positions of power to rethink rules.

The timing of the podcasts’ release is serendipitous too: it comes just ahead of the publication by Cassava Republic of Ardizzone’s translation of Faïza Guène’s latest book to come into English, Men Don’t Cry, on October 12, 2021. Judging by Guène and Ardizzone’s past work, it will be a compelling and necessary read.

If you get a chance to read the book or listen to the interview, I’d love to know what you think!