Chosen Tongue

Sophie Lewis is a London-born translator and editor. Working from French and Portuguese, she has translated books by Marcel Aymé, Josephine Baker, Hélène Cixous, Annie Ernaux, Violette Leduc, Noémi Lefebvre, Nastassja Martin, Françoise Sagan, Leïla Slimani, Stendhal and Jules Verne; also Victor Heringer, Patrícia Melo, Sheyla Smanioto and Micheliny Verunschk, among others. For six years she was principal editor at publisher And Other Stories, and her most recent in-house position was as managing editor at The Folio Society. With Gitanjali Patel, she co-founded Shadow Heroes translation workshops. Lewis's translations have been shortlisted for the Scott Moncrieff and Republic of Consciousness prizes, and longlisted for the International Booker Prize. In 2022, she won the French-American Foundation's prize for non-fiction translation.
In this episode, Sophie speaks about translating Hélène Cixous's Angst, and about the intellectual, ethical, and stylistic decisions that shape a translator's work.
We talk about voice and fidelity, humour and idiom, and about what it means to write in English while carrying another language inside the sentence.

Costanza Casati was born in Texas and raised in Northern Italy. She holds an MA in Writing from the University of Warwick and has worked as a screenwriter and journalist. Her debut novel, Clytemnestra, sold into more than twenty territories worldwide and won the Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award, while her second novel, Babylonia, was an instant Sunday Times bestseller and the winner of the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize.
In this conversation, Costanza reflects on writing in her second language, English, the imposter syndrome that has accompanied her success, and the visceral encounter with Clytemnestra that first compelled her to write. We speak about language, identity, translation, and the persistence required to claim one's voice across tongues.

Gonzalo Ceron Garcia was born in Santiago and spent his first years in Chile's Colchagua Valley region, before moving to Switzerland and eventually to the University of Kent, where he studied for a PhD under Scarlett Thomas. He currently teaches creative writing at the University of Warwick. His debut novel, We Are The End, was published by Galley Beggar Press in 2017. His second novel, Telenovela, was published in November 2025. 
In this episode, Gonzalo reflects on writing in English after leaving Chile, and on the distance a new language can create — from place, from memory, and from inherited histories.
We talk about family, politics, and storytelling, and about the freedom that comes from approaching language as something fluid, playful, and alive.

Ledia Xhoga (pronounced Joga) is a fiction writer and playwright. She was born and raised in Tirana, Albania and currently lives in Brooklyn. Her debut novel Misinterpretation was published by Tin House Books (US & Canada) and Daunt Books (UK). Misinterpretation was longlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize, the recipient of a New York City Book Award, Finalist for Center For Fiction First Novel Prize and a Best of 2024 Book by Debutiful. Her work has been published in Electric Literature, Lit Hub, Brooklyn Rail, Large Hearted Boy, Intrepid Times, Hobart and other journals.
In this episode, Ledia reflects on writing in English as an Albanian author, and on the uncertainties and freedoms that come with choosing a second language.
We talk about interpretation as both a literary practice and a way of living, about insecurity and voice, and about how the idea of home shifts over time.

An award-winning author, theatre artist and spoken word poet, Dr. Cristina A. Bejan has published books in all of her genres (history, poetry, playwriting). Her plays have been performed in 4 countries and her hit play DISTRICTLAND was bought for TV development. She has appeared as an expert on A&E's The History Channel, C-SPAN, and multiple Romanian TV channels. Her work has been featured in the Washington Post, Times Literary Supplement, Foreign Policy, Libertatea and ELLE Romania magazine ... among many more print and audio outlets. In NYC she has performed at La MaMA Experimental Theatre Club and launched 5 published plays at The Drama Book Shop. Bejan is the only Rhodes Scholar (since the establishment of the scholarship in 1903) to hold Romanian citizenship and the recipient of the the George Parkin Distinguished Service Award 2025 (Rhodes Trust). She earned her Masters and PhD at the University of Oxford, fully funded by merit-based Rhodes and Fulbright scholarships and many grants. Bejan is also the Executive Director of Bucharest Inside the Beltway, a multicultural arts & culture platform that she co-founded in 2014 to promote local and international inclusive voices in the arts. She is currently working on a number of writing projects while auditing classes at the Sorbonne. 
In this conversation, Cristina reflects on Romanian identity and on the tension between sentiment and practicality that runs through both the culture and the language.
We talk about her evolving relationship to Romanian, the weight of national narratives, and what it means to move from emotional inheritance toward conscious choice.
The poem we mention during the interview is part of the book Green Horses on the Wall: https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/green-horses-on-the-walls-by-cristina-a-bejan/