Blue Light Hours

Saturday, October 19, 2024
Talks Stage, 12:30pm

Join us for a conversation with Bruna Dantas Lobato, who won the 2023 National Book Award for Translated Literature, as she presents her debut novel, Blue Light Hours. In this atmospheric and poignant work, adapted from a story originally published in The New Yorker, a young Brazilian woman navigates her first year in the U.S. while maintaining a fragile bond with her mother back home through the confines of video calls. Set between the contrasting worlds of a Vermont college dorm and a Brazilian apartment, Blue Light Hours explores themes of distance, care, and new beginnings.

About the Author

Bruna Dantas Lobato (pronunciation audio) is a writer and translator. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Guernica, A Public Space, and The Common. She was awarded the 2023 National Book Award in Translation for The Words That Remain by Stênio Gardel; her other translations of Brazilian literature include The Dark Side of Skin by Jeferson Tenório, which won an English PEN Translates Award, and Moldy Strawberries by Caio Fernando Abreu, longlisted for the PEN Translation Prize and the Republic of Consciousness Prize. Dantas Lobato was born and raised in Natal, Brazil, and now lives in St. Louis, Missouri. Visit her at brunadantaslobato.com.