Kate Briggs is a British translator and writer based in Rotterdam. She is co-translator with Roberto Nigro of Michel Foucault’s Introduction to Kant’s ‘Anthropology’ (2008) and translator of two volumes of Roland Barthes’s notes for lecture courses at the Collège de France: How to Live Together (2013) and The Preparation of the Novel (2011).
Kate Briggs also won the prestigious Windham-Campbell Prize, one of the most substantial literary awards and received a $165,000 grant for her book This Little Art (2017).
A fusion of memoir and history, the book delves into the art of literary translation, unravelling the strangenesses and paradoxes inherent in this practice. The book was translated into several languages, including German, French and Spanish.
She has also published four experiments in literary criticism: Exercise in Pathetic Criticism and The Nabokov Paper (co-devised with Lucrezia Russio), Story the Story in It (2015), and Entertaining Ideas (2019).
In her debut novel, The Long Form (2023), Briggs explores co-living, attention, and rhythm as she narrates the day of a mother and her newborn baby. A narrative that navigates the nuances of motherhood is focused on the aftermath of a sleepless night, connecting ordinary moments and profound questions.
Kate Briggs teaches at Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam.
Photo credit: Fitzcarraldo Editions
