Meet the 2024 Mentees: Miriam Akervall (Swedish)

Miriam Akervall is translating a poetry collection by a Swedish poet into English.

(Image Description: Miriam, a white person with dark, close-cropped hair, stands outside on a sunny day wearing black pants and a plaid button-up.)  

Miriam is a Swedish-American poet and translator currently pursuing an MFA in Poetry at the University of Idaho. Born and raised in Lund, Sweden, they have lived in the United States since they were nine years old.

Miriam approaches translation with emotional linguistic intuition. Being conversationally fluent and familiar with two distinct Swedish speech worlds (their mother’s, southern; and their father’s, northern), they can often pinpoint the feeling of a word before they’re able to define it. To Miriam, translating poetry is a way to feel connected to their heritage, to spend intimate time with poems they love and share them with an international audience.

Texts that particularly interest them are collections that wrestle with the intersections of gender, sexuality, cultural identity, and mental health. As a translator descended from Hungarian and Lithuanian immigrants, they appreciate writing that reflects an intersectional Scandinavian identity. Miriam sees their book project as the first in a translation career dedicated to bringing the work of underrepresented Swedish poets to English-speakers everywhere.

Miriam is honored to be included in ALTA’s community of translators, and especially grateful to be working with Rachel Willson-Broyles with support from the Swedish Arts Council during the Mentorship Program.