by Writing Workshops Staff
A week ago
Shelly Bryant has translated more than 150 books from Chinese. She has never taken a formal Chinese lesson.
That second fact comes at the end of our conversation. Bryant went to Singapore and Malaysia as an exchange student, moved to Singapore for good after university, and has split her years between Singapore and Shanghai ever since. She is the author of twelve volumes of poetry, and her translation of Sheng Keyi's Northern Girls was long-listed for the Man Asian Literary Prize. What translating taught her, she says, is that no perspective is final, and that much of what shifts from one reading to the next is carried in the voice.
That idea drives her new four-week class at WritingWorkshops.com, the official education partner of Electric Literature: Reading Like a Translator: What Translators Can Teach Writers About Voice, Rhythm, and Meaning. Beginning Tuesday, January 19, 2027, students will set multiple English translations of a single passage from War and Peace side by side and listen for what changes. They will study how Bryant carried a memoirist's voice and a novel's many narrators into English in her own translations of Li Na: My Life and A Single Swallow. Then they will read their own pages the way a translator would, and leave with a substantially revised draft and individual written feedback.
Below, she explains why she is more suspicious of talent than of craft, and how voice memos gave her the micro essays she had been chasing for years.
Here is our Meet the Teaching Artist Interview with Shelly:
Writing Workshops: Hi, Shelly. Please introduce yourself to our audience.
Shelly Bryant: I’m a poet, translator, and writer. I was an exchange student to Singapore and Malaysia a very long time ago, and after I finished my university studies, I moved to Singapore for good. After about 10 years, I started splitting time between Singapore and Shanghai, which I’ve done ever since.
Writing Workshops: What’s the thing you wish someone had taught you earlier in your writing life, and how does this class address that?
Shelly Bryant: That no perspective is final. When I look back on it, I realize that at least one teacher tried to explain this to me in very different terms, but it took a lot of practice to undo early habits and embrace it. Translating helped me experience the ways that perspective can shift from one reading to the next, and also within the writing itself, and much of that is carried in the voice.
Writing Workshops: If a student walks away from this class with one skill or shift in their writing they didn’t have before, what is it?
Shelly Bryant: Voice is one of the most distinctive aspects of any piece of writing, and also one of the most difficult to pin down. I hope students will leave this class with a better ear for their own voice, and with a great deal more confidence in using it.
"Translating helped me experience the ways that perspective can shift from one reading to the next, and also within the writing itself, and much of that is carried in the voice."
Writing Workshops: What’s the last sentence you read that made you stop and reread it? Type it out for us.
Shelly Bryant: 小王第一次参加聚会，一直低着头，不敢跟别人说话。 (This sentence had been included in a learning exercise teaching the use of the phrase 大大方方 to Chinese learners, asking them to select which sentence had used it most appropriately – but then, this one doesn’t use the phrase at all.)
Writing Workshops: Describe a moment in a workshop, one you were teaching or one you took as a student, where something clicked for someone. What happened?
Shelly Bryant: The student’s expression changes immediately. There’s a reason we use cliches like “a light went on” or “a lightbulb moment” to describe the feeling: when you watch it happen, it really does seem that the face brightens. There’s a slight smile that begins to tug at the mouth, and the eyes grow just a little wider. The entire face seems to lift. It can feel odd that something so abstract and intangible as understanding can be so visible to the human eye, but that is exactly what understanding looks like. And most importantly, you know immediately that it isn’t just understanding what you, the teacher, hoped to convey. This sort of moment is the student understanding how the concept fits into their life and practice. It has little to do with the teacher at all. That moment is all the learner – everything falling into place in an instant, in their intellectual world. Generally, I feel that those moments aren’t about understanding a concept, but more about seeing how that concept works in practice, in the learner’s own life.
Writing Workshops: What’s a craft move you’re slightly obsessed with right now? Not a big concept. A small, specific technique.
Shelly Bryant: This has to do with idea capture. I’ve long written essays that I knew were ALMOST there, coming close to what I had originally hoped they would be, but somehow landing somewhere else. I realised recently that the problem was that I was going beyond the point where I wanted to land. So I began to find new ways to capture the idea in real time, rather than having an idea and then waiting until I had time to sit down and write it out properly. I have always kept a notebook, but this is a step before the notebook - voice memos, most often. It’s helped me begin to pen the sort of micro essays I’ve been seeking for many years, and it is quite exciting. I haven’t shared them with anyone but a few close friends so far, but I am very excited about the shape they are taking, and I’m very aware that it is the moment of capturing the idea – without interference from my inner editor – that has brought it all together.
Shelly's micro essays came together once she caught the idea before her inner editor could. Her four-week class brings that same close attention to your own pages.
Enroll in Reading Like a Translator →Writing Workshops: What’s a book you press into people’s hands that has nothing to do with writing craft?
Shelly Bryant: There are several. Man’s Search for Meaning, anything Diana Wynne Jones, Geraldine Harris’s hard to find Seven Citadels series, I/Thou, the short story “A Bullet to the Brain,” W. H. Auden poetry, Todd Boss poetry, Edwin Morgan poetry.
Writing Workshops: What’s the worst writing advice that sounds smart?
Shelly Bryant: This is a great question. I think it might be “you’re really just writing for yourself.” At the end of the day, if I am writing JUST for myself, then I am not writing for publication. There are many reasons to write other than publication, and I practice those alongside the writing I do for publication, but it’s counter productive to conflate writing for yourself with writing for publication. A reader does not share your experiences, your biases, your assumptions, or your perspectives. That means they won’t make the same connections you do, or at least not naturally. So we have to weave the threads together a little differently when we are writing for publication than when we are writing for ourselves.
Writing Workshops: Finish this sentence: “Most writing classes won’t tell you this, but...”
Shelly Bryant: …there’s a lot of talent out there. Talent and craft are two different things, and I am more suspicious of talent than I am craft. Talent can appear to be an inborn “way with words,” but may just as easily be the product of a good education. Craft is what begins to separate the people who will make careers of their writing from the very large pool of talent that is out there.
"Talent and craft are two different things, and I am more suspicious of talent than I am craft."
Writing Workshops: Who was your first literary crush?
Shelly Bryant: Probably Dr. Seuss, but I was too little to realize it. The first book I remember just falling in love with was Where the Red Fern Grows. About the same time, my parents read The Chronicles of Narnia to us, and I loved that series, and it became another literary crush as well. I can’t remember which of those two really came first, but I remember Where the Red Fern Grows being MINE in a very unique way.
Writing Workshops: What’s your teaching vibe, in one sentence, not a paragraph?
Shelly Bryant: Collaborative: this is your class more than it is mine.
Writing Workshops: What would your students be surprised to learn about you?
Shelly Bryant: I have never taken formal language lessons in Chinese.
No formal lessons, and more than 150 books carried into English anyway. What Shelly has instead is an ear, and that ear is what she brings to Reading Like a Translator. Over four Tuesday evenings on Zoom, you'll compare published translations side by side, then revise a piece of your own with her written feedback in hand. You'll finish hearing your own voice more clearly and using it with more confidence. Class begins January 19, 2027, and early bird tuition of $330 runs through January 5. Come find out what your sentences are really saying.
Four Tuesdays on Zoom with a translator of more than 150 books. The feedback is individual, and this is your class more than it is hers.
Save Your Seat in Reading Like a Translator →WritingWorkshops.com is an independent, artist-run creative writing school and the official education partner of Electric Literature. Since 2016, we've helped writers strengthen their voice, develop a greater understanding of craft, and forge a path to publication.
