“With breathless, rhythmic, gender-fluid passages, Grubisic brings to English readers Nights Too Short to Dance, a timely and essential work from a queer Québécois icon. Grubisic’s translation fluently navigates a multitude of narrative voices as they remember a history of queer love and struggle. Nights Too Short to Dance is a tender celebration of youth and aging in a trans body, beautifully rendered by Grubisic.”
      
      —Peer assessment committee: Peter Feldstein, Jessica Moore, and Anne-Marie Wheeler

Katia Grubisic is a writer, editor, and translator. Her work has appeared in Canadian and international publications. She has been a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for translation and the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry, and her collection of poems What if red ran out won the Gerald Lampert award for best first book.

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Imagine you could spend a day with any person, living or dead. Who would you choose and what would you do?

I wouldn’t mind visiting Marie-Claire Blais at her place in the Florida Keys. I only got to meet her once in person, and she was so generous, chivalrous. She was someone who, when she looked at you, when she saw you, you became enormous, you felt translucent. And she would probably be even more magnanimous in the spiritual dilution that I imagine comes after death, the largesse of having become one with all things. A glass of wine and a conversation with her ghost would surely set me right.

What advice would you give your ten-year-old self about 2024?

I was such a nerdy, serious kid. I think I would give myself the best advice I’ve ever received, from a dance teacher I was lucky to work with, Holly Small: don’t fret so much.

Who has been the biggest influence in your journey as a translator?

My parents had an impact way back upstream. My mother was a French teacher, and I’m so grateful she spoke to us in French, that she gave me my first language. My father is a linguist, and there is some genetic predisposition there, too, I think; I also translated for and with him very early on.

As for more current influences, I learn so much from every author I translate: with David Clerson I learned to trust my own voice interleaved in his; with Marie-Célie Agnant I found new ways to plumb the spaces between words; Perrine Leblanc, whose short piece on knitting I recently translated from my regular column in Maisonneuve magazine, reminded me about rigour and integrity… Different writers have different strengths and styles, and different books require me as a translator to evolve in new ways. Every single writer I work with influences me.

What did you learn about yourself as you worked on the translation of Nights Too Short to Dance?

I learned something about how grief functions over time. All the death around the HIV-AIDS epidemic, all the fear and discrimination from Stonewall on down, our collective disbelief at the first Trump administration… Nights Too Short to Dance touches on those times, as well as on more intimate tragedies. It can feel baffling, overwhelming, terrible. But all of it—the loss, the love, the rejection, the various forms of fitting in—is so anchored in relationships, in the long sway of sturdy friendships, that every shock and every joy is part of a tapestry that’s bigger than the sum of its parts. It’s not so much that grief fades or is forgotten, but our perspective gets wider as time passes, and we get to see the whole life that it’s a part of.

What was the last book by a Canadian author that changed you in some way?

The next book I’ll be working on, Catherine Leroux’s Peuple de verre, which is dystopian in ways that feel alarmingly current, really worried its way into my brain.

And I just finished Alice Zorn’s Colour in Her Hands, which I promptly recommended it to a translator friend—that’s how you know you love a book! I’m also finally digging back into Steven Heighton’s selected poems, now, a couple of years after his death; his voice has always held a kind of nostalgia, and the vantage of this retrospective makes the absences he always evoked so nimbly that much more tangible. His poems—all poems?—are a good way of loving the world, fully, à belle dents.

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Excerpt from Nights Too Short to Dance, by Marie-Claire Blais
Part One: Solitary Angels

Don’t move, I’ll lift up your pillow so you can look out the window at the falling snow, let it come, René said, let the snow bury us all, his voice high, a distant squeak, Olga, Natasha, Tania, whatever your name is, let it snow, ’tis the season, I won’t be around for much longer anyway, a few nights at most, my dear girl, could you help me take off these goddamn pajamas, if I have visitors today I want to look good, I want to be elegant like in the old days, I used to play piano in cabaret clubs, bars that were mostly for women, maybe a few men now and then, rarely, I used to play waltzes there in my fine clothes, I charmed them all, Tania, I’m telling you, is snowing like Moscow, the Russian nurse said, same as Moscow, never stops, children walk back from school reciting Pushkin, and take off my dressing gown too, René ordered, where’s my shirt, the bright white one, and my black jacket, the blue tie, get them from the closet, I want to dress as if I were going out, I might well get a visit from my mistresses, they might come, Olga, what mistresses, Madame, what are you talking about, don’t call me Madame, René said, don’t forget that I’m a man, I look like a woman, especially to you who knows everything about me, too much perhaps, you’ve been looking after everything my body needs, I wish I could look after myself but my arms and my legs are so weak, I can’t get used to this, if God created birth, a joyful act, how could he not soften the end for his creatures, explain that to me, Olga, why did he make me a woman when I’m actually a man, what do you think, I think you are a woman in natoor, Olga said, you’re saying it wrong, René replied, it’s nature, I should teach you to improve your pronunciation, the misfortune of the life of my parents, Olga said, was living under dictatorship where God does not reign, so jealous are the dictators, Olga said, do you feel more comfortable, Madame René, is it time to listen to your music, great music every morning, I know, I am bringing your phone, and you will listen while the snow is falling, you’ll have to read what’s written on the screen, René said, my eyes are going, I can’t read anymore, just yesterday I was dancing with the girls, my soul was full of joy, what else is there if we lose joy, who are you telling, Madame René, when I go home in evening to prepare dinner for my husband, the Bulgarian, he beats me because he doesn’t want me to stay with you, Madame, he says bad words, like you are not the best patient, I know, leave him, my dear girl, leave him, René said, come live with me, I’ll treat you well, except I won’t be around much longer, oh, don’t cry, I know men have a steely heart, woe to them, I wasn’t one of those, I’ve always treated women with respect because I understand them, your husband is an ignorant man, my dear Olga, how can you live with such a man, a sadist, really, come live with me, it’s just that I’m on my way out, the path of no return, how ugly it is, how horrible, I’ll give you my house and all the snow outside, is it cold in here or is it my health failing a little more every hour, it is little bit cold, Olga said, I will make fire in the fireplace, it will warm up your apartment, Madame René, the water maybe was cold when I washed your face, your neck, your breasts, I don’t have breasts, René said, you know that, what are you talking about, Olga, I’m built like a man, I’m sturdy, I don’t have breasts, please don’t talk about me like that, all I’m missing is one thing, one body part, all it took was for me to be virile in my head and a strange, rather attractive man was born, there I was, women believed in my manhood, and, I must say, they loved me, though there were abuses, on the part of the women I dated, I mean, they suspected that the manly ornament was only in my head, sometimes life is just a game, you know, I’ll explain it to you one day when you’ve left your brutal Bulgarian, it’s no life at all to be beaten by a man, a real man, and not feel ashamed, you’re still a child, René said, and I feel sorry for you, so what’s going on with my party clothes, Olga, can you tell me, Olga, Tania, Natasha, why God made such pitiful conditions for humankind, he just didn’t think about it, it’s that simple, René said, if he had given it any thought, we wouldn’t even be here.

Excerpted from Nights Too Short to Dance written by Marie Claire Blais translated by Katia Grubisic ©2023. Reproduced with the permission of Second Story Press.