“Translation is that which transforms everything so that nothing changes.”

—Günter Grass

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Ági Bori originally hails from Hungary, and she has lived in the United States for more than thirty years. A decade ago, she decided to try her hand at translating and discovered she loved it. Her translations and writings are available or forthcoming in 3:AM, Apofenie, Asymptote, The Baffler, B O D Y, the Forward, Hopscotch Translation, Hungarian Literature Online, the Los Angeles Review, Litro Magazine, MAYDAY, Northwest Review, Points in Case, The Rumpus, Tablet, Trafika Europe, and elsewhere. She is a translation editor at the Los Angeles Review.

Unlike Russell Baker’s memoir, Growing Up—the first book she was assigned back in college—which depicts Baker’s childhood and young adulthood during the Great Depression and WWII, Ági Bori's growing up took place behind the Iron Curtain in Hungary in the seventies and the eighties. Her relationship with Hungarian literature remains strong, thanks to the early period of her life when the tiny seeds of reading began to germinate in her brain, eventually growing into a tree with a crown wide enough to span across continents. It is this nascent love of books that evolved into a lifelong passion for reading and translating. In addition to reading and writing in Hungarian and English, her favorite avocation is reading Russian short stories in their native language.

PORTFOLIO

While Listening to Bach's Double Violin... (a poem) by Anna T. Szabó in The Baffler
Background Knowledge (personal essay) by Miklós Vámos in Write or Die
Fifty-seven Steps (novel excerpt) by Miklós Vámos in Hungarian Literature Online
10 Most-Anticipated AI-Generated Generated Books by Ági Bori in The Rumpus
The Burgeoning Collection of Unnecessary Screenshots on Your Phone in PIC
Selected poems by Francesca Bell translated into Hungarian in Parnasszus
Translator interview between Willem Marx and Ági Bori in Asymptote
Translator's note on Miklós Vámos by Ági Bori in 3:AM MAGAZINE
Mother's Nature, Remembered (excerpt) by Miklós Vámos in 3:AM MAGAZINE
Fifty-seven Steps (novel excerpt) by Miklós Vámos in 3:AM MAGAZINE
Portrait of Miklós Vámos by Ági Bori in Hungarian Literature Online
Love, Mother (a satire of a dysfunctional family) by Miklós Vámos in MAYDAY
Chinese Snow (short story) by Miklós Vámos in B O D Y
Things to Do After My Death (personal essay) by Miklós Vámos in Tablet
Things to Do After My Death (novel excerpt) by Miklós Vámos in HLO
Immortal (short story) by Miklós Vámos in Asymptote
Electric Train (short story) by Miklós Vámos in Asymptote
Clayton McKee interviews Miklós Vámos and Ági Bori on Trafika Europe Radio
Things to Do After My Death (novel excerpt) by Miklós Vámos in Trafika Europe
A personal essay by Miklós Vámos in the Forward
Barge (flash fiction) by Miklós Vámos in Northwest Review
The Danube Never Sleeps (fictional rejection letter) in Rejection Letters
Things to Do After My Death (excerpt) by Miklós Vámos in the Los Angeles Review
Ab Aqua Libertas (personal essay) by Miklós Vámos in Litro Magazine
Newlyweds (short story) by Miklós Vámos in MAYDAY
Translating and Other Extreme Sports (interview) in Hopscotch Translation
Mother's Nature, Remembered (novel excerpt) by Miklós Vámos in HLO
Mother's Nature, Remembered by Miklós Vámos in the Los Angeles Review
Mother's Nature, Remembered (excerpt) by Miklós Vámos in Northwest Review
I had no choice but to survive (interview) in Hungarian Literature Online
The Story of My Light (personal essay) by Miklós Vámos in Apofenie
Dunapest (novel excerpt) by Miklós Vámos in Hungarian Literature Online

MEDIA