Bio

Caroline Froh is a literary translator from the German. She holds an MFA in Literary Translation from the University of Iowa, where she was also a Provost’s Postgraduate Visiting Writer. Froh is a former ALTA Travel Fellow and the recipient of a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant, and her translations and writing have appeared in the Michigan Quarterly Review, LIT Magazine, Asymptote, The Scores, and elsewhere. She is the translator of the novel Mr. Katō Plays Family by Milena Michiko Flašar as well as a collection of prose entitled Selected Short Works by Mariella Mehr, which is forthcoming from New Directions. Froh lives and works in the mountains of northern New Mexico.

Project Description

To support the translation of the trilogy of novels TheChild, Fire Magic, and Accused by Yenish author Mariella Mehr from German. Mehr (1947-2022) belonged to the Yenish people, a traditionally nomadic minority group with roots in Switzerland and other parts of Western Europe and grew up during a period when the Swiss state was funding a forced assimilation campaign targeting Traveler populations (itinerant or traveling groups in Europe). The program, "Children of the Country Road," lasted from 1926 to 1973 and separated more than 600 Traveler children from their families, including Mehr, who was taken from her mother and spent the rest of her childhood in group homes, foster homes, and orphanages. With her signature twisted syntax used to suit the emotional needs of the text, each book of the "Trilogy of Violence" follows a female protagonist who endures various trauma and abuse reminiscent of events in Mehr's own biography.