Visiting literature faculty Bruna Dantas Lobato is not only a National Book Award in Translation recipient and holder of two MFAs, but also a member of the Bennington class of 2015. The Sawtell resident worked for the former campus paper, Bennington Free Press and spent many all nighters in Crossett Library.
She learned of Bennington College at a college fair, drawn by the statement: “Read 100 books. Write one.” While this particular slogan advertises our MFA in writing program, the more she learned about Bennington College, the more the school became her dream.
Originally waitlisted, she ended up receiving a full scholarship, and spent her next four years studying storytelling and fiction through identity politics. She took courses in literature, Spanish, sociology, and psychology, to name a few. Her research focused on her own identity as an international Latin American student and she reflected this in her senior thesis: a collection of short stories focused on leaving home, struggles of the relationship with language, and the social concerns of the life of immigrants and international students.
Her debut novel, Blue Light Hours (October 2024), follows a young woman from northeastern Brazil attending a college in Vermont, and the connection she makes with her mother through long distance FaceTime calls. The premise of her book was an idea she started writing from scratch back in 2017, but then remembered she wrote something similar in one of her short stories for her Bennington thesis. While only two to three paragraphs from the original short story can be found in the book, her time at Bennington truly had an influence on her writing journey.
A moment at Bennington near and dear to Bruna was her very last summer. She stayed on campus, bonding with other international students as they all applied to graduate school, reading lots of books, and reflecting on her emerging adulthood. Returning from a winter Field Work Term doing literature independent study, she received the call from NYU that she had been accepted to their creative writing MFA program.
Lobato’s MFA experience opened doors for her after Bennington. NYU gave her the opportunity to pour herself into reading and writing, earn both respect and criticism for her work, and time to think about her perspective as a young international student, surrounded by older, American students.
Inspired by both the lack of diversity in literature during her first MFA program and her emerging expertise in the literary field, she decided to pursue an additional MFA this time in literary translation at the University of Iowa. The experience introduced her to bilingual writers like herself and led to her various book translation deals.
The Words That Remain (January 2023), written by Stênio Gardel and translated by Lobato, is a story of a man named Raimundo, who receives a letter from his young love, Cicero. Raimundo grew up in a destitute area of Brazil, however, is unable to read. It is a story of intersectionality, the characters being both Latin American and in a homosexual relationship. Lobato’s translation of The Words That Remain earned her the National Book Award.
“It doesn’t feel real,” she chuckled, the first exophonic recipient of the National Book Award expressing her candid feelings. She pursued translation because of her passion for bringing these unknown, beautiful books to a large, Western audience. “I never dreamed being Brazillian would do me good.” Portuguese never presented a liability to her writing career, but made her a success story. She no longer viewed herself as, quote, “a glorified google translate”, but an established writer and translator.
Bruna Dantas Lobato is inspirational to many: international students, writers, and any Bennington student hoping to do something big one day. Every step in her educational career, and the knowledge she is gaining from her translation and novel writing experience, has created a triumphant and wise woman.
By the end of this year, Bruna Dantas Lobato can say she is both an award recipient and a published novel writer. What’s next? Right now, she is focused on her students and what she wants them to get from her classes. She is currently teaching Experimental Women in Fiction, The Immigrant Novel, and Reading and Writing the Short Story: The Body
Be First to Comment