Uilleam Blacker: 'As English speakers, we need to learn cultural humility'
The author and translator talks about the island library that fostered his love of reading - and crossing borders through literature
International Booker Prize 2023 Judge
Uilleam Blacker is one of Britain’s leading literary translators from Ukrainian
Uilleam Blacker is Associate Professor of Ukrainian and East European Culture at University College London. He is the author of Memory, the City and the Legacy of World War II in East Central Europe (Routledge).
He has translated the work of many Ukrainian authors, including Oleg Sentsov’s short story collection Life Went On Anyway (Deep Vellum). His translations of novels by Taras Prokhasko and Maik Yohansen will be published in the Harvard Library of Ukrainian Literature series. His translations have appeared in many anthologies and journals, including The White Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, and Words Without Borders.
He has written for The Atlantic, The Times Literary Supplement and The Literary Review, among others. In 2022, he was Paul Celan Translation Fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna.