photo by ASC.

Esther Allen. She's my wife's dearest friend and was the maid of honor at our wedding back in the day. I am very impressed with her because she is an academic of the highest degree, but doesn't have a snooty bone in her body. She played the giant Swiss Miss lady in my little RED DOG film and has offered repeatedly to wrestle an albino alligator on film for me if I needed to get that type of Fellini-esque action scene in the can. Now, that's friendship! Seriously though, she is one of the most respected translators of Spanish and French literature in her field. Below is her current biography.

Esther Allen has translated more than 20 books from French and Spanish into English, including Jose Marti: Selected Writings,a Penguin Classics anthology that was selected by the Los Angeles Times Book Review as one of the Books of the Year of 2002. Her most recent book is a hauntingly beautiful novella called In Her Absence, by renowned Spanish writer Antonio Muñoz Molina, published last month by the Other Press. Co-founder of PEN World Voices: The New York Festival of International Literature, Allen is executive director of the newly-launched Center for Literary Translation at Columbia University, and is also an assistant professor at Baruch College, CUNY. In June of this year she was made a Chevalier de l'ordre des arts et lettres by the French Government.

Please visit her website www.centerforliterarytranslation.org. Both Adrienne and I are very proud of you and your work...keep it up.