Author Eva Meijer and Anne Thompson Melo in Conversation with Gregory Hom

Good evening everyone and welcome to San Francisco Public Library. Um I'm Lori Telerico. I'm the adult community engagement coordinator here and thank you for joining us tonight for this special conversation with Ava Mayor and an Thompson Melo in conversation with Gregory H. To begin, I'd like to ask for your attention as I share our land acknowledgement. The San Francisco Public Library acknowledges that we occupy the unseated ancestral homeland of the Ramatos Aloney peoples who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula. We recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland. As uninvited guests, we affirm their sovereign rights as first peoples and wish to pay our respects to the elders, ancestors, and relatives of the Ramach community. All right. Thank you for coming here tonight to talk about the book See Now. See now is our July August selection for On the Same Page, our citywide bimonthly book club which brings readers across San Francisco together around a shared book. For this selection, we've partnered with our environmental center and everybody's climate which is another library initiative that invites our community to explore the many ways climate change is shaping our world. C Now felt like a particularly fitting choice for this collaboration through fiction, philosophy, and nature writing. Ava Mayor imagines a future transformed by rising seas and asks us to reconsider our relationship with the natural world. We're also grateful for the center for the art of translation for helping make tonight's program possible and for supporting the work of bringing international literature and literary translation to the Bay Area. Ava Mayer is a Dutch philosopher, visual artist, writer, and singer songwriter whose fiction and non-fiction has been translated into more than 20 languages. Her work has received numerous awards and has been praised by publications including the Guardian and the New York Review of Books. Anne Thompson Melo is a Scottishbased translator who studied Dutch and German. She was long listed for the John Dryden translation prize and shortlisted for the Gotha Institute award for new translation. And joining Ava and Anne in conversation tonight is Gregory Hal, program manager as of SFPL's Wallace Stegner Environmental Center. Gregory has worked with the library since 2008 supporting environmental programming and community engagement and has led the Stagner Environmental Center since 2023. I'm so pleased that we're able to bring these three perspectives together tonight. Those of a novelist, a translator, and an environmental librarian to explore CE Now and the questions it raises about climate loss, resilience, and our relationship with the more than human world. Please join me in welcoming Ava Mayor, Anne Thompson Melo, and Gregory Hal. All right. Good evening, everyone. >> Hello. >> Yeah, I was very excited to be able to work with Lori to make this book be the on the same page selection. Um, so I guess well Eva, let's just start with what made you want to write this book? Um well for me it's often the books always begin with um uh a vision uh something that comes to me from outside. I don't think that um very often there's this image of the writer as a kind of master over the work. Um but I think that it works the other way around. At least for me as a writer, the books come to me and it's my job to um yeah do them justice. Um and I think for this book uh specifically, so in C now the North Sea floods the Netherlands and it does so um one kilometer a day. It also ends at the border. So it doesn't flood uh Germany or uh or Belgium. Um but um once I had this so the idea came to me um before this I wrote uh another book uh uh a magical realist murder mystery um about a river in a fictive uh South American country. Um and this river um was based on a real natural phenomena that uh when the soil is very dry new rivers spring up. Uh but yeah, it was a murder mystery and the Dutch people didn't really get it, you know, they didn't really get um the the the idea behind it of nature uh speaking back and um being stronger than us humans. Um and then uh about a year after this book um had been published, I thought, okay, then I will write a book that you will get uh and I will let the sea flood the whole country. So this is kind of how it um uh how it came about. And Ann, this is your first book that you translated. >> Yes. >> Well, it's it was I mean it's a delightful read in English. I I can't read Dutch. So, um how how did you come by this opportunity then to translate this book? >> There was a competition called Steven's Prize. Um and every year they have a um a diff they pick a different book and a different language um and ask give you an extract and say translate you know this passage um and I won the one for this this book and the prize was to translate the book and uh he got writer's retreat in the Pyrenees as well. So that was very nice. >> Okay. >> Um and yeah, so it it was an amazing opportunity really to work on my first literary translation. I'd been a translator for a long time before that, a commercial translator. >> Yeah. So it's exciting that I mean you have you've been wanting to do literature for a while? Yeah, it it's um I think I had and commercial translation was dying a death anyway that there was no more work. Um and literary translation had always appealed and especially like during lockdown I started going to uh workshops, translation workshops online because it living in Scotland most of these things happen in London. I think and it's kind of expensive to go and take part and to pay for the travel and everything. So when everything sort of moved online it was huge opportunity to go and do these things and to learn from different people and yeah the Dutch um organizations do a lot of uh uh free workshops for translators. So yeah, >> so there's this cool um aspect of the book where there's there's a lot of like description of like the sea and like this kind of um philosophizing and and thinking about the sea. Um did were those did you just write all that stuff out and then pick which sections to put in the no or did you write those bits and write some write some plot and then write the bits about the sea and then write some plot again? How did that work for you? So one of the things that um uh uh happens in C now is that um uh one of the things that I'm very interested in is how different uh ways in which we use language shape what we can say. So I work as an academic philosopher, as a novelist, I write poetry and in all of these different um uh language games, Vitkinstein calls them. So it's not games in language, but different ways in which we use language um uh we can say something else about reality. And when you think about uh the sea or um other natural phenomena or climate change, there are many different ways in which we speak about um in which we can speak about it. So um think for example of political language. political language is very well suited for um um yeah making collective decisions and also as we see now for a kind of uh populist uh fear installing in the people but yeah it has certain uh certain functions then there's the language of science uh science is very good at at the kind of descriptive level what's happening with the sea what's happening with the forest fires in uh Europe at the moment um what's happening with the temperature and uh and so on. But then there's also the language of poetry and um one of the characters um in the book is called Willow. So um um in sea now uh it's a very anti-hierical book. So it zooms in uh on uh all the different groups leaving the Netherlands because yes the sea is coming one kilometer a day. So we need to get moving and um in the beginning the politicians are a bit hesitant but they soon accept that they need to go. So everybody needs to go and then um uh in the book we follow the humans but we also um follow the other animals who are um traveling out of the country um and um uh some people want to resist. So there's an activist, a poet, and a scientist, and they become the protagonists uh of the book. And uh they're the ones that uh go back at a certain point because they all have someone that they want to find, someone they lost when the flood came and uh someone they're looking for. And one of them is a very young uh poet called uh Willow Vil in uh in Dutch. And Willow writes little poems about the sea. Uh for example, the sea is ancestor because the very first life on earth emerged from the water. Let me look if I see another one. The sea as guardian of feelings. When you die, no soul is left behind, no spirit. But sometimes there are feelings. A love you never professed which has always stayed with you. A loss you couldn't put into words and that you could never share. A premonition that floated to the surface then drifted away again. A wish that had been pushed down so far, so deep that it seemed to have disappeared. The sea tends to all those feelings and preserves them. So um uh yeah there are the the poems Willow's poems that say something else about reality something about the uh yeah the more existential aspects of what we lose when the sea comes or when other um disasters strike. Um and I think that in that sense the book is also a um yeah a meditation on language. How does language work? How does language shape our um our world and the way we view what's happening? And also, yeah, I think that we need more poetry to counter the political language and to um add to the uh scientific language to uh make people aware of what's happening now and maybe sometimes bring them some comfort as well. So Ann, how how how was that aspect of the book to translate? Was were the poetic parts more difficult, do you think, or >> um they were just a creative challenge? I mean, they were such fun to do. I think it was I mean I loved this book and um yeah, the it was just always interesting to find the different voices of the different characters. And I think I said before that um there's a reporter who was kind of my favorite character. I don't know why, but he reminded me of a Steve Kugan character called Alan Partridge who was a reporter who um is incredibly confident in what he's doing but not very good. Um and the politicians because of lockdown and what had been going on there. Um the language that was used there um it was very similar. the press conferences and uh it was just fun to do. And the the poems as well um always a challenge because there would be plays on words that wouldn't work. So you'd have to find something different that would work in English that but kind of reflect the same the same feelings. Um trying to think there was there was one we talked about that um the sea is home where I had to change quite a lot because the there's a lot of list there's a list of different life forms in the sea and then um a lot of them when you translated them into English were called something worm and they were already a lot of worms in the original and it just was very wormheavy. So I had to come up with some other creatures that lived in the same part of the world and so it fitted sort of scientifically but also um they sounded sounded nice, you know, they had a rhythm to them. Um, so yeah, it was always a a challenge but fun. >> Well, it's I mean those parts I mean it the whole thing is very enjoyable to read and the poet the poetic parts are I thought it was a very special part of the book. Um, speaking of animals I know you paid so much attention to animals in your research in your writing. I read Bird Cottage before I before this also that I really enjoyed I guess. Um, did you want to write more about animals in this? Like I mean like I just know that there's sections of it where it says and then these animals left and these animals left and that's kind of like the end of it. And did you want to give them more attention, more of a voice or how did that work for you? >> Well, I think that as humans we tend to be very human focused. Um, and uh, humans find themselves really interesting. They find themselves the most interesting species on the planet. But this is a very problematic attitude. I think it's um uh uh it has led to a lot of violence and continues to lead to a lot of violence to uh to other species. Uh but it's also boring. You know, it's nice to uh to look around you and to see who else is um uh living on this planet. Um and I think that in this novel, it's um that it's a very funny narrator. So, I can't really choose the narrator. the narrator just comes to me and then narrates the book. And this is also something that Ann and I spoke about. Um because I think with translation the most important thing is that somebody gets the tone right um for the language that it's being translated in. So the tone will always be slightly different because yeah the sense of humor is slightly different and the um the way in which yeah the the directness for example Dutch people are very direct and our language is very open and clear in a sense and I think English is that too but it works slightly different um uh but the narrator is um is just it's a funny person I think it's someone who has a lot of schwung and just just goes out and uh yeah tells you about all of these different uh different groups leaving leaving the country. And I think that one of the um um challenges as a writer, if you want to do justice to the different realities of everybody on this planet, is to um um yeah, to include them in in a sto in in stories in a story in a way that does justice to their experience and their way of being in the world, but also um yeah, makes it understandable for humans and in this case this was very easy because everybody needs to leave the the foxes need to leave and uh let me see where's the uh maybe I can if if you are speaking I will I will look it up there's a piece about the foxes that um uh that's nice and um uh our world is not just human you know all of the other animals also live here and um the whole idea of property that humans in western societies have. The the idea that the earth belongs to us that um uh that's a right that we gave ourselves without consulting others uh without consulting the planet and um uh and also of course humans in other uh communities like indigenous communities have other ideas about um uh about how this works. But yeah, western society were very focused on having and on property and all of these things and it's very harmful. Uh and all the other animals also don't buy it. They know that uh the world is theirs too. But it's um uh it's sometimes difficult to speak about this or show it. But in this book it's um yeah it works out well. So, I would say that a there's there's a lot of disastrous things happening in this book. Um, and they seem kind of said like in like almost like a dead pan way. It doesn't like it like there's you just kind of like these bad things happen and we keep moving on. Um, I'm wondering how is that for what why was that like the tone choice or and how was that to translate also when you when we get to an >> Well, I think that this is life and also the older you get, you know, the more disasters happen and you are supposed to just keep going on. Um, and I think that um uh when I uh began writing this book, uh my father was ill and when I was writing the book, he died. I did tell him uh about uh about this novel and I told him it's a funny book because he liked uh funny books. Um but I think that for me it's also because a lot of people now read it as climate fiction and read it in the context of the uh ecological crisis that are happening and that's very important and this is also what I want to speak about um uh as a writer and as a human being but in a sense there's a much more existential story beneath it um on the one hand the collective story of the Dutch people and the water because the the whole struggle against the water. We live beneath sea level and there's um uh there there used to be a deep fear of the water in the Dutch people and it's a little bit forgotten now. There have been disasters in the past with uh the water like the Vatn uh in Zand in the 1950s. Um but my generation and younger generations kind of have forgotten this but it's still somewhere in our uh collective consciousness. Um uh so that's that's one way to read a book about this. Yeah. How how do we as humans uh deal with these other forces that are in fact stronger uh than we are? But there's also a much more personal way to read it. And that's what what do you do when disaster strikes in your own life when someone you love dies or uh when you get ill or when someone uh close to you um gets ill. um how do you deal with this? How do you um continue to live? And uh and I think that the sea and also other natural entities and also the non-human animals can teach us something about this about the eb and flow about the seasons about the way in which um things end and begin again but differently and end and begin again. Um and also yeah the duty that we might have to keep going and to try to improve uh life for others. Uh but yeah, I think that that um uh there are different stories in this uh story and um you asked about the humor and I think that um uh humor is um also one of the ways in which we deal with disaster in in general as human beings. >> Yeah. Okay. What was it right like to figure out how to I mean there's parts that are quite funny and is how do you like balance that with obviously it seems like a very it's a it's like a disaster novel also. >> Yeah. I mean it it's it's the juxiposition of the two that makes especially the narrator's voice with the uh quite snippy tone in time at times and then um and then contrasting that with what's actually happening. But then the yeah it's the balance of making that knowing that that's a horrific thing that's happening, but actually how people cope is to just have that sort of blinkered view of this is my life and I I'm going to deal with the things that are important to me. And um I think with the politicians, you see that that they're they're not going to do anything until it's too late really. And um yeah with >> yeah and it's also asking the question who's disaster right because there are already uh humans displaced there are other animals who are displaced you know it's going it's actually happening uh but then when it happens in the Netherlands so one of the things is that the Dutch people are completely um uh they completely trust that other countries will take them in as refugees and we now have this because they're like oh we bring we will bring good fortune and uh uh yeah >> we're hard workers. >> Yeah, exactly. So it's um so it's a very um yeah specific attitude also. >> Yeah. >> So how did you come up with see now as a political slogan in this book? Because it's not it's not a demand. It's just like the sea just exists. How did that become the way that your activist decided to make that her her slogan? Yeah. So there's uh there's a group of three that um that goes back to rescue and one of them is uh called AI and AI is an an activist from Rotterdam and um uh she started a group um um yeah an activist group to make humans listen to the sea. And at a certain point that's not really necessary anymore because the sea clearly uh speaks for itself. Um but um yeah the slogan comes from emphasizing listen to the sea now because um uh and I think that this is something that we should do now because we are kind of on the edge. I mean, it's not going to end well for uh most ecosystems uh in the world the way um that it's going, but but we still can repair quite a lot and we can choose to care differently for um ecosystems, species, uh individuals, communities. Um so there's the now that matters because we do need to act now. The first sentence of the book after the sea has a has a little says something but you have to read that for yourself but the first sentence um is it took a while for people to wake up to what was happening a forens um and this is just what we see um around us and even when it's happening in our face with the forest fires now people will still say oh well yes climate change is something for the future. >> I think we had a lot of discussions with the publisher about the title um for the English early on because I think there was something that needed to go to press earlier than we'd actually decided on the title. But um the the I think Dutch works slightly differently that with the sea now, but we needed something that would would get across that would could be used as a a slogan but could also mean you know be said later that you know this was a self-fulfilling prophecy that um your name Um, and I think it works. Yeah, I was I wasn't sure, but I think in the course of the book there were quite a few things where Aar said um that you could just use, you know, translate directly where I thought that stretches English quite a lot, but then you said that you'd stretch the Dutch quite a lot in the >> Yeah, this is always a problem with translation. So I I write something very experimental with a lot of new words and strange sentences and then the translators make it into normal English and that's just you know it's difficult. Um uh so it's it's good if we can uh discuss it but we had lots of discussions about this book and what I said before about the tone being right if that's if the tone is right then other things are um are less important but at the same time I really care about having the right words at the the right uh yeah the right places. So when you were thinking of this book, how much did you think you were writing about this world versus just a possible Netherlands? What how does this how did this how did that affect your decision-making about how to tell the story? >> I think very often my books are situated in a world that's um uh just it's slightly outside of our world. So it's it's our world, but then things happen that might um uh that that are just not very likely to happen uh in the real world. So in the novel in another novel called called A Word for it's not been translated into English. This is a book that came out uh very recently in Dutch. Words begin disappearing from the language, but they also begin disappearing from the book. So um that makes it um at a certain point quite uh difficult to read um uh and it's something that's sort of happening because uh young people are um communicating a lot in English in the Netherlands and they're also using a lot of images and videos and um uh I don't know how it is here but in the Netherlands there's also a problem with children not learning to read uh properly in school. So there's a lot of discussion about this. Um and there's another thing happening with language and that is that under influence of populist politicians there's not a lot of conversations anymore. there's no proper public debate in which we really think about different positions but it's just yes no I find I think this I think that um so we have loss of language in many uh different uh directions and of course there are also um uh states in which you lose language I had long co for two years which really affected my thinking uh and also feeling but also my ability to speak to others and um Yeah, when you you lose the words, you also use the um opportunity to um speak with others but also to make a story of your life for yourself. So it it leads to a loss of self. And in that book the word I for example also um also disappears. So um and then of course the politicians say let's switch to English because it's much better for companies and uh all of that anyway. So yeah um but that's so that's a book about something that's actually happening but it uh in the book I can make it happen um uh in um in a much quicker way and I can show really show what what yeah what it will lead to and in a sense that's the same that's happening in uh see now because the sea is not going to flood the Netherlands in this way but we do know that the country is going to be changing uh in the coming 10 20 30 years. So there are maps of the country because some places will flood uh and other places will be drier because the temperature is going up. We had five heat waves uh this summer. Um so it's it's really going to um to change and in the end it's going to be an economic decision. Are we going to invest in uh uh in the dikes or are we going to give land back uh to the sea? And it's probably at a certain point it has to be the second uh the second option. But it's something that people don't really speak about. And in a novel you can just show it, you know, you can you can make it happen and then um uh yeah and then the country's gone and uh humans live elsewhere and the jellyfish are really happy. Uh and the herrings are also very happy. So Ann, in your home I mean were were you has this book were you already thinking about climate a lot or has has this book made you think about climate a lot more? um we I was already thinking about but yeah this is um made me think more about how it affects all life forms really that um but yeah I mean even Edinburgh this year uh there's been massive fires and the Ken Gomes like it's the north north of Scotland Um huge forest fires though um which is unusual and yeah it's used to be there's a place called Arthur's Seat in the middle of Edinburgh. It's it's like a extinct volcano and it it would go on fire like a little bit of it once every few years, but now it's every year there's there's fires with the heat and it's definitely noticeable that there's it's changing and we've I mean Edinburgh is is not generally hot but you know um and it hasn't had the heat wave compared to like the Netherlands or Germany or but it's had we've had our heat wave which is probably about 28 or something which is it's hot for Scotland but um but yeah it's it's affecting a lot things but yeah the book did make me think more about it. >> Where was I going to go with this? >> I don't know where were you going to go. Oh. Um, well, I would just say like some of the descriptions of of um of the scientist and her love for her cat are really really special. Um, and do you both do you both have pets and animals that you live with? >> No. Well, then you wrote very well about that, I have to say. >> Really really special. >> I can show you some of them. My sister made these bands. So, uh, uh, this is Joy. This is Puty. This is Doris. Um yeah, I live with um uh dogs and cats and um uh also uh ex laboratory mice um guinea pigs uh and a rabbit who's disabled and very angry uh and yeah because she lived for 5 years in a very small cage uh and now she's with me uh because she's sick so I can't rehome her but yeah so many other animals and I think that for me because I also my philosophical work is about um uh multiecies justice and uh um nonhuman animal languages. Uh it matters to actually engage with the groups that are um concerned because otherwise you're the human writing about the other animals and it should be a collaborative process. I think >> fun. >> Yeah, fun and also horrible. Uh it's also uh I because I wrote um uh just before we came here I told um there's also a mouse on the on the trousers called Fakia. Um and she's one of the 25 ex laboratory mice that came to live with me. And the mice taught me that uh a mouse is not the kind of creature that we think mice are. you know, um, humans see mice as very small, simple beings, uh, without much of a personality perhaps. But once I began, um, looking at the mice, because the mice didn't want to be my friends, um, uh, I played music for them every evening because, yeah, if you're going to live in a mouse house, then at least you should have an hour of live music, uh, in the evening. And they really liked it. So, I played a guitar and sang songs and they liked the ukulele. They had I had this little riff that I um that I played and um and I looked at them and because I looked at them, I could recognize their faces and I saw that they were uh friends with each other. Um uh some some mice had best friends. I even learned that they bury their dead. So when somebody dies in the group, they will wash that person and um uh then drag her to the side of the um of the mouse house and uh bury her with um uh a straw and uh and hay. And it's um uh and and the mice also taught me about life itself because they only live for one and a half or two years. Um so they have the whole cycle of life uh in that period. And yeah, it's just they just really taught me um about the fragility but also the the strength of life. And you only learn this when you begin looking at mice and um uh engaging with them differently because otherwise you're stuck in the yeah the the narratives that already exist. And these are um uh uh these come out of these anthropocentric um uh uh knowledge producing systems that we have in our society. So uh but then this makes it so this makes it better because you get to know the mice but it also makes it worse because uh in the Netherlands hundreds of thousands of mice are killed yearly in laboratories and over here it's millions and millions. So um knowing that these are individuals with their own personalities, ideas about life and who want to make friends, who want to you know do things, they always have projects. They um yeah, I can go on about the mice for a long time. But uh >> we are going to now let there be audience questions. We've got a mic. Uh so raise your hand if you'd like to ask the question. Please wait for the mic also so that we can hear you. >> Hello. Thank you for your presentation and chat today. I'm kind of curious. You did mention um um Victenstein and also I think Haidiger and a few of your comments and word games and also being in the in the world. And I've read a few philosophy articles and they're they're very hyperfocused on one specific topic and I'm kind of curious as to you being an academic philosopher and also a writer. Um how do you deal with the when these ideas come to you? uh how does your process differentiate as when do you want to write this as a philosophical project or article as to now this is something that I want to express in a uh literary work of fiction. How does your process um differ distinguish from those two um ways of expressing yourself? >> Yeah, thank you. So I actually began by um writing songs and poetry. Um, and when you write songs, it's just a matter of um, tuning into the universe and, you know, playing and um, being open, opening up something. And I think that um, writing a novel for me very much works in that way as well. So I usually I it's very easy. It's the easiest thing there is. I just sit down and I have to type. So I'm always, you know, I write like four books a year or something. So I'm always, you know, um, concentrating. Um but then for um academic work it's much more like um building a house and um uh thinking beforehand okay I should you know um use these and these and these arguments and uh these and these and these philosophers and then build it like that and then it works like that. So there's still a little bit of freedom and I noticed that um I'm the kind of person who first needs to write something before I can think about it properly. So I um and this is the same for academic work but I do think it out more beforehand. I do sort of know okay this is going to be the argu argument these are going to be the steps and it's also yeah just a different way of using language. So on the one hand um what I like about academic philosophy is that it's quite abstract in a way because you're using these concepts that have a very specific meaning and um they're a shorthand for a whole um idea world of ideas. Um uh but on the other hand the language is also often quite ugly and kind of straightforward or um uh and it's also strange because my academic work is 99% in English and I write the novels in uh in Dutch. I do write some non-fiction also directly into uh English that is not so academic. So I'm changing it but yeah it's just a different way of thinking and a different way of writing and it allows me to um be more normative because I think that uh in novels it's very much about showing the ambiguity of uh life. So for example in this book there are the politicians and yes they are sometimes idiots but they also have their own uh personal lives and um uh they have more depth than than their the things that they say show. And when you're writing an academic piece it it needs to be very straightforward and the meaning needs to be um as clear as possible. Um and what I like about doing different things is that it's also an exercise in being precise. So um uh when I write academic philosophy, I try to be really precise. Um yeah, in by saying certain things about reality and then when I'm writing a novel, it's much more about doing justice to the world of the novel and the the characters and uh the words need to be much more beautiful as well. So yeah, I'm lucky to do it. Thanks. >> Hi, this one is for an I was wondering in order to be a translator, do you have to have an understanding or a read a wide variety of types of writings in the language you're translating and also the language you're going to translate to. And then does it get more very much more specific that there's certain types that you are more interested in? >> It's difficult because this is the first the first uh literary translation that I've done. So um for my commercial work before I had to be very precise and more it was a lot more scientific. Um, and I always found that as a commercial translator, you were trying to almost like improve on the original text that you're trying to tailor it to to an audience, a specific audience in in the source in the target language. Um but you're also trying to make because I was working in commercial field trying to make it snappy and very memorable and um the difficulty here was to try and make things let things be ambiguous and not try to explain anything which I think I remember going to a in these workshops that I went to. We went there was one with Margaret Joel Costa who translates a lot from Spanish and Portuguese and it was a poetry workshop and she um gave us a a text that had been translated from Basque I think into um just almost machine translated and then we had to make that into a poem. Um and every one of us I think almost explained what was in the poem that it was quite a difficult challenge whereas um yeah her her version was a lot more vague and um left you to interpret it. Um so that was one of the challenges with this. >> I have a question. So if your book is translated into multiple knit languages with every translation, is it a similar process that you go through with the translator to make sure that the book is conveying what you want it to convey? >> Well, many of the languages I don't speak. So, uh, Croatian, Turkish, um, even Italian or Spanish, I understand a little bit of Spanish, little bit of Italian, but English I understand. German and French. Um, so these are the difficult languages for me. Uh, because I then want to yeah read it and have a say about it. Um, uh, and I also think because English is very often used um because many people speak English, so it's very often used also by other translators and um, uh, uh, and it matters that it's um, that it's done correctly. So, so there's kind of um for many languages I only usually the translators will email me with questions. Uh for example, I think it was the Polish translator of a book who wrote to me about Bird Cottage um that something smelled like the sea. Uh, and she said, "But but people here are not going to, you know, have a real idea. Can I make straw instead of see?" So I was like, "Yeah, sure." And for example, the the Swedish um translator needs to know if the grandmother is the mother of the mother or the father because then that's something that you you different languages have different um yeah ways of saying it. So that's nice for me as well. And I also um I appreciate it because I think that if you write to the writer with questions then you also yeah show that you care you know and that you really want to know what's what something says. But the thing is that um uh there's also it's it's also just you know trusting the translator and uh and hoping that they'll they'll make something uh good uh out of it. And you know, a book um gets a different life in a different language. Anyway, I have an Italian translator and he's very funny. He says, "If I would translate it directly, the Italian people wouldn't like it." So, he says, "I always make it, you know, nicer all the languages." I'm like, "Okay." Yeah. >> Hi. Uh I'm Dr. Z and I wanted to ask you that uh what kind of environmental organizations are in uh Netherlands who are working on this environmental catastrophe because here we have Trump and he thinks that there's no environmental problem at all in the world. >> Yeah, it's um that's a nice question. And so in the Netherlands you have um uh kind of lots of um uh organizations that uh care about nature. Um but there are also um some very interesting art projects. Um, for example, we have the Embassy of the North Sea, which is um a large um uh 12-year long project in which artists, uh, scientists and others try to figure out how we can represent the North Sea. So the first four years were devoted to listening um uh and then the second four years to speaking and the last four years to representing. Um and um we also have another project called ZOP in which um humans uh um uh can in which different organizations, cafes, schools, um art uh institutes can uh vow to be a ZOP. And this means that in their decision making they will also take into account the nonhumans and um this is a whole program. So then you need a speaker for the for the non-humans and um uh so these art projects are nice and we also have a political party the party for the animals um that um uh represents not only non-human animals but actually has a whole um uh quite holistic view of uh doing politics. So instead of viewing politics as a power struggle, they really see politics as a way of um yeah repairing uh what's going wrong in society and they promote a much more caring um uh system and society and they're also against economic growth. Um and um yeah uh really um because we have a multi-party system it works a bit differently um than it works over here. They don't have a lot of power but they are represented in parliament and also in um uh most cities in the Netherlands right now in the provinces we have different layers of uh decision making. Um so they are a driving force and also can put things on the uh on the agenda but it's difficult to translate to um uh countries with um uh two party systems or um where it just works differently. So we have lots of um uh organizations doing um speaking up for nature. um uh among which also which is um an organization that went to court because the Dutch uh government is not probably not going to get the targets um uh uh not going to be able to um uh um yeah have enough legislation in place to um uh um yeah to control our um uh nitrogen and some other um uh uh things that are ruining the environment and contributing to the to the climate crisis. So yeah, there's actually quite a lot happening, but at the same time uh as in many countries, we're not really uh translating this into adequate action, unfortunately. >> Hi, thank you for the conversation. Um, Ava, I really liked it that you talked about animal language and how you let the mice like express themselves and learn from them. And I'm wondering um how you experience that with non-anim animal beings like trees or the sea maybe because reading I spent quite some time in Scavening like the Dutch coast and reading this book I felt like you express like the sea there very well and I'm wondering how you um experienced that. >> Yeah, thanks. I think that um uh I I recently wrote a little book. It's called multiecies assemblies um uh and uh there I um uh approached this question from uh the side of political philosophy. So how should we uh conceptualize political decision making not only with non-human animals but also with trees uh and other plants, natural entities, fungi and so on. Um and I think that um uh so in philosophy there's a lot of discussion about agency. Who acts? What does it mean to act? What role plays uh intentionality? Uh rationality all of these human uh concepts. And this concept agency works different in relation to different actor actors because the sea acts in a different way than mice act, then humans act, then uh trees act and all of these. And I think we need to um develop um an attitude that's open to um uh dealing with different kind of natural entities and um uh this requires experimentation um uh and also imagination like um uh is happening in the scene now. So I don't think that there's a strict boundary around uh non-human animals or human animals. I think that there are many many different groups, different ways of expressing there's a lot of literature um now about the social lives of plants and uh ways in which they um express themselves. Uh and then this raises a lot of philosophical questions. Can we call this intelligence? Can we call it agency? Can we call it um uh intentionality? Um and that's very interesting. Uh it's also a debate that has been going on for decades of course but it's now quite prominent because there's um yeah there's a lot of literature a lot of research being done in these fields. Um so I think that as humans our job is to be attentive to different uh kinds of beings and um to um yeah to translate this also um in different ways to policy um but also to um yeah developing new cultural ways of dealing with the others who are other than us. Um, I arrived here in San Francisco yesterday and I was really struck by the trees growing up so straight in the in the very steep streets and um, yeah, I've been looking at them a lot and sort of wondering what their lives uh are like. Um, also because sometimes they don't have a lot of other trees, maybe their roots can interact, but often also not, I think. So it's uh um there are many ways in which we can live on this planet and our life form is just one of many and also very varied. So it's um it's humbling I think to meet a tree and to think oh yeah how are you doing? How how did you end up here? You know from being a little seed. Thank you, Ava, Anne, and Gregory for such a thoughtful conversation, and thank all of you for joining us here tonight. I also want to again thank the Center for the Art of Translation for helping make tonight's program possible and for supporting the art of literary translation. If you'd like to continue exploring authors and books featured in On the Same Page, our bimonthly citywide book club, the next selection is The Volcano Daughters by Gina Maria Balera. We hope you'll pick up a copy and read with us in September and October. And then after this program, copies of See Now will be available for purchase in the lobby, courtesy of Borderland Books. Um, and Ava and Anne will be available for signing following the program. Thank you again for being here, and I'd ask all of you to please join me in one more round of applause for Ava, Anne, and Gregory. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. All right.