About Eric

Eric M. B. Becker is a writer and literary translator, as well as digital director and senior editor of Words without Borders. He is the recipient of fellowships and residencies from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fulbright Commission, and the Louis Armstrong House Museum. In 2014, he earned a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant for his translation of a collection of short stories from the Portuguese by Neustadt Prize for International Literature winner and 2015 Man Booker International finalist Mia Couto (now available from Biblioasis as Rain and Other Stories). He has also published translations of numerous writers from Brazil, Portugal, and Lusophone Africa, including Noemi Jaffe, Elvira Vigna, Paulo Scott, Martha Batalha,  Paulo Coelho, and Carlos Drummond de Andrade. Current book projects include work by Luiz Schwarcz, Lygia Fagundes Telles (NEA Fellowship 2019), Lima Barreto, and an anthology of writing about Rio de Janeiro. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, The Literary Hub, Freeman’s, and Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, among other publications. He has served on the juries of the ALTA National Translation Award and the PEN Translation Prize; he also serves as director of career development on the board of the Portuguese-English Literary Translators Association (PELTA), in addition to serving on the board of directors of artist brand management consultancy CargoCulture.