Engaging with Listeners and Introducing Comprehensive Writing Tools

What happens when you fall in love with a book that deserves a wider audience but has never been translated into English? How do you navigate international copyright law, multiple publishers, and estate permissions when you have no translation experience? Dani James shares her journey from discovering a powerful Flemish memoir in her childhood home to becoming its first English translator, a labor of love that took years to complete.

In the intro, How to start dictating fiction [Helping Writers Become Authors]; Payment splitting with co-writers and collaborators [Draft2Digital]; Rise in spam and scam emails [Writer Beware]; The Thinking Game Documentary; My AI-Assisted Artisan Author webinars; The Buried and the Drowned, A Short Story Collection; Writing Partition with Merryn Glover [Books and Travel].

Write and format stunning books with Atticus. Create professional print books and eBooks easily with the all-in-one book writing software. Try it out at Atticus.io

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Dani James is a writer and literary translator who recently translated Return to the Place I Never Left, a Holocaust survivor memoir by Tobias Schiff.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. 

Show Notes

• Growing up in Belgium's Jewish community and discovering Tobias Schiff's Holocaust memoir
• Navigating international rights and copyright law. The complex legal process of securing translation rights across borders.
• The creative challenges of literary translation. Balancing faithfulness to the original with making the English version the best it could be.
• The challenges of publishing
• Marketing a translated memoir. The realities of promoting a niche book as a first-time author.
• Lessons learned and what's next for both translation and original writing

You can find Dani at DaniJames.co.

Transcript of Interview with Dani James

Jo: Dani James is a writer and literary translator who recently translated Return to the Place I Never Left, a Holocaust survivor memoir by Tobias Schiff. Welcome to the show, Dani.

Dani: Thank you for having me.

Jo: It's great to have you on the show. First up, just—

Tell us a bit more about you and your background and how and why you got into translation.

Dani: I'm a writer based in New York City, but I grew up in Antwerp, Belgium. Even though I'd been writing creative nonfiction and fiction for years, Return to the Place I Never Left was my first foray into translation.

It was really driven by an interest in translating this book that I personally adored and kept rereading over the years. Thankfully, I speak several languages and I grew up going to school and learning Flemish and Dutch, and being educated in that language.

I had no previous translation background, but just because I enjoyed this book so much and felt it was deserving of a wider audience, it inspired me to try my hand at it.

That's ultimately what drew me to translation. I found a lot of joy in it, and I've actually learned a lot about how translation, in my opinion, can really enhance a creative practice in ways that I wouldn't have expected before I took this on.

Jo: It's fascinating because your accent is American to my ear, but I've worked in Belgium and people might not know much about Antwerp. How did you get from Belgium to New York City?

Tell us a bit more about your traveling childhood and upbringing.

Dani: My parents actually met in New York City. That's also where I was born. They met in Washington Square Park in the eighties, I feel like that gives you a little bit of a lay of the land if you've ever been there.

My mother was visiting, my father's Jamaican and he had been living in the US since he was a teenager. My mother was visiting and they met and fell in love, ended up getting married and having me.

So I was actually born in New York City, but then when I was still a baby, we moved to Belgium. I did kindergarten all throughout high school in Belgium.

In the summertime though, I would come to New York City because the biggest part of my family is my dad's side of the family and they lived in New York. So I spent my summers—the whole summer and sometimes even the winter break—in New York City, and the rest of the time in Belgium.

I've been back in New York now for about 15 years. Now I do the opposite, I visit Belgium every summer. My mother still lives in Belgium and I have a lot of childhood friends there. That's how that came about, and why I definitely have the New York City accent.

Jo: Let's get into this book then. Return to the Place I Never Left has great personal meaning to you and your family. Tell us about that.

What are the connections there?

It seems so strange to hear your accent and then to think of the connections you have there.

Dani: There are so many connections actually. First, my grandparents were Holocaust survivors. When you think of the Jewish community in Belgium at the time where I grew up, they were all survivors or descendants of survivors. In the case of my grandparents, they survived the war by hiding.

My mom's side of the family is Jewish, so I am Jewish. The majority of both of my grandparents' families did not survive being deported to Auschwitz. The story of the Holocaust is one that is part of my family's history and therefore also my history.

I really grew up with this knowledge and knowing these stories. They're very common in my family because they've directly affected my relatives and my family members.

Growing up, when I used to go to synagogue—I'm not as religious, but I am of course culturally Jewish—for the high holidays, I did used to go to the synagogue to celebrate them.

Fun fact: typically there would be two Black people in the synagogue when I grew up in Belgium at the time, and it was me and another girl who actually is Tobias Schiff's granddaughter.

Me and this other girl, our mothers knew each other. Of course, it's a small community. We knew each other and I believe that this is how the book entered my home. I believe the daughter of Tobias Schiff, the mother of this childhood friend, ended up bringing a copy of the book when it first came out.

I don't really remember how I first was introduced to it, but I do know that like all people who grow up with big bookshelves at home, and when you're a reader, I would just pick up books from the bookshelf and at some point I came across Return to the Place I Never Left. The original title is Terug naar de plaats die ik nooit heb verlaten.

When I read this book the first time, it really stood out to me because I had known about the Holocaust, had heard all of these stories. Every family of survivors has these crazy stories that you know of and that you learn growing up, and I'd read several books.

What stood out about Tobias Schiff's book was the style in which it was written. It's written in verse and it looks like poetry on the page.

It's very direct language because it comes from an oral project initially where he was interviewed for a documentary, and it makes reading it very accessible because the language is very direct. He's speaking to you as a friend, or sometimes it sounds as if he's speaking to himself as well.

It allows you to be a witness to his innermost thoughts, or it allows you to hear him speak to you as if he was a friend. The style of the book really drew me in and I ended up rereading it several times over the years.

I have really bad movie and book memory where I will forget entire plots. That works really well for me because it allows me to reread my favorites over and over again. Some of my favorite books and movies, I'll reread them or rewatch them four or five times.

That's one of the things I did with Return to the Place I Never Left. I've reread it several times over the years. At some point I thought I feel like more people would appreciate this story.

It gives people good insight into the experience of someone during the Holocaust and what that was like and surviving these death camps, and afterwards grappling and navigating with these really traumatic experiences and how that impacted him in his life. Outside of those really intriguing parts of the book, it's also set in Antwerp partially.

If you've traveled around the world, very few people know Belgium. A lot of people know the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, France, all the countries around it, but not a lot of people know about Belgium, and definitely not about Antwerp.

I also like the fact that in a way it shows some details about the city of Antwerp in a very unfortunate setting, but Antwerp is where I also grew up in Belgium.

For all these reasons, Return to the Place I Never Left is an incredibly powerful book in itself, but it also tells such an important story of important places and important experiences that are meaningful to me and many people around the world.

I think even if you don't have a personal connection to this, you could gain a lot and learn a lot just from reading this book.

Jo: The original was in Flemish, is that right?

Dani: Yes. There's actually quite a journey even to getting to this book. Originally Tobias Schiff was interviewed for a documentary, and the documentary was titled Récits d'Ellis Island. It was in French.

It was a documentary about Holocaust survivors and their experience, and I believe it was filmed in the late eighties and perhaps came out in 1989. It was filmed by a French filmmaker named Claude Lelouch. He interviewed Schiff for hours and learned about his experience.

Afterwards, the slot that the TV station had allocated—it was going to be aired on TV—was only 26 minutes long. The filmmaker thought, “How can I distill this story into 26 minutes? It's not doing justice to the entire story. I can't tell this story in such a short amount of time,” but it was a limitation set by the TV channel.

He had to edit it down, so what he ended up doing was releasing or publishing at the time the transcripts of his interviews with Tobias Schiff. Those initial transcripts were in French and I believe it was a little booklet.

Some editors came across it and thought, “Wow, this is really powerful,” and then contacted Schiff to collaborate and use these transcripts as a starting point to create what would then become Return to the Place I Never Left, the book.

He ended up writing more and it ended up being, instead of French, translated into Flemish or Dutch, which Schiff also spoke. That was the official first publication, which was published in the nineties in Belgium, the Flemish version of Return to the Place I Never Left. That version was then translated into French around 2012.

Jo: Yes, that's crazy. He died in 1999, right? So this is now his estate who are making these decisions.

Dani: Yes, exactly.

Jo: So now it's in French, the book is in French.

Dani: Yes. In 2012, the book was translated into French, and then in 2017 it was republished in Belgium and the Netherlands in Flemish. In 2025 my version came out, which is the very first English translation of the book.

Jo: Which is great. We have to go further into this because some people listening might be thinking, “Oh great, if I find a book I love in a different language, I can just translate it.” But that's not true.

How did you get the rights to do this, and what was that process, given that you don't have a translation background?

Dani: It was a complex process and I had no former knowledge of the process when I started. I just knew I wanted to translate the book. Before I even got started, I asked the family for permission.

I know one of Schiff's daughters, and so I was able to ask her because, as you mentioned, since Schiff passed away, the family is the estate. That was my initial request. I just said, “I really love your father's book. I would love to bring it to a wider audience. Would you be okay with me translating it?”

They said yes. They were actually excited about this prospect and I had a verbal confirmation. That was my first step.

I had had this idea for several years, but then in 2019 I did an MFA in creative writing, a Master's in Fine Arts. I had asked the director of the program if they had a translation course and they didn't, but they did encourage me to pursue this project. They said me translating it could be one of my final projects in addition to my thesis.

What was great is that even though there was no particular guidance on translation or what to do there, I was able to translate it and have someone give feedback on at least the parts that I produced with no context of the original.

That was just a good experience there, and I was motivated to work on it also alongside generating new material for a thesis.

Rights-wise, once I had completed the manuscript and I was ready to shop it around, I realized that when I looked into it a little bit more, I needed proof that I had the rights.

Jo: Yes, exactly. It's kind of crazy to me listening to you.

You went ahead with translating the whole thing without having any kind of contract?

Dani: Yes, and I recognize that this is very different also because the original author had already passed away. There are several ways.

When books are published today and when the author is still alive, sometimes the publishers contract it out and they look for translators, and the publication deal then looks very differently because as a translator, you're contracted just to translate. The publishing deal is with the author, of course.

In this case it was very different. I have this manuscript, I start shopping it around, a publisher's interested. I have this note, this little PDF note from the family stating I have their permission.

Once the publisher was interested in publication and sent me a publication contract, then I had to ensure that I really had everything in order with the rights in Belgium and with the family.

Initially what I did is I have a friend, a good friend who's a lawyer, and I asked him to review and he said, “Okay, I can look at this, but you need to get yourself a real lawyer.”

So I got a lawyer and that was the best decision I had made because this lawyer had experience and really helped me navigate not just the publication deal with the publisher here because in the US I am the copyright holder of the English translation of Tobias Schiff's book.

Jo: I was going to say to people listening, this translation is a subsidiary right of the original book. Actually it is the publisher as well, I presume, of whichever you translated from—the French or the Flemish—that is also the point, right?

It's not even just that you are asking permission, you are using another publisher's book as the basis for your own translation.

Dani: Yes, exactly. As I was navigating this—signing my publication deal and negotiating it here in the US—I was also navigating the rights in Belgium. Some of the steps we had to go through were that I had to formalize the permission.

First of all, we had to find out who owned the rights. Was it still the Belgian publisher or had it gone back to the estate? That's what we had to figure out. Actually, the rights had reverted back to the estate.

Jo: Oh, okay. That's good.

Dani: Yes, so then we knew who we had to collaborate with, who had the rights and who could transfer the rights to me or grant me permission. Then we had to create a document for the estate to sign. But in creating this document, we also had to navigate Belgian copyright law.

At some point I also had to find a Belgian lawyer to not just review, but to make sure that what we are writing in this document aligns with both US and Belgian copyright laws.

Jo: Oh my goodness.

Dani: Yes. We also, for best practice, had to translate the paperwork on the Belgian side as well. All the documentation with the family were in two languages, they were both in English and in Dutch or Flemish. All of that had to be squared away before I could sign the publication deal here.

Jo: You're paying for all of this, you're paying for all those legal things.

Did you get an advance from the English language publisher or is this all a labor of love?

Dani: This is really a labor of love. I did not get an advance because I already had the finished manuscript. I was like, “Here it is.” So no advance.

Thankfully in Belgium there was an organization for Belgian authors and we were able to get support from a Belgian lawyer specializing in literature who was able to help us pro bono. So that was a beautiful find.

I had to dig deep, just because I was reaching out to several lawyers and trying to find out who could help and then find out about some organizations. It took a lot of navigating.

I have to say, I'm very grateful for my lawyer because my lawyer had more experience, not in translation specifically, but just in the literary or creative industry, and so he's able to see ten steps ahead.

While I'm looking at a document and thinking about how does this make sense for right now, he's thinking, “But what if three years down the line this happens and that happens?”

Jo: Yes, like if there's a potential movie, for example, from the English language.

That's what you have to plan for—utter failure where nothing happens and then utter success where everything happens.

It's like, “Okay, movie deal, massive amount of money comes into whose account and how does that get to the estate and where's the split?” It's great that you had that experience with your lawyer because these kinds of rights are really difficult to manage.

Dani: Yes. With the right people in place, specifically the lawyer, that was amazing. You mentioned no advance, you have to invest your money in it, but money well spent when it's someone who's really out to also protect you and has this experience and this insight for just those situations that you mentioned.

What about if there are movie rights involved? What if someone wants to adapt this into a play? Who owns the rights even?

Jo: Yes, or even somebody then decides to translate your English version into a different version. These things go back to multiple layers, which is why copyright law is so complicated. Just taking a view now—

Would you have done this project if you had realized all of this stuff you would have to do later?

I would say to people listening, it is important to get that stuff done before you start a project, because if you hadn't known them, they could have just said, “Well, no, you can't have the rights,” or they could have had an offer for an English translation as well, and your work would have been wasted. I guess it's just all worked out well.

Dani: I probably would have done it the same had I known. It ultimately, in my experience, was a great learning experience and like you mentioned, the book is here, it's published in the US, it's doing well. So it was very much worth it. I learned so much from it.

I've also learned that the way that the process works is not always this way, and it really depends on the whole situation. How long has the book been out? Who owns the rights? Is there interest? Is there a publisher?

Typically I would say though, in smaller cases, in the case of this book, this is written in Flemish or Dutch, it's a language that's not really spoken in many places in the world. Between the estate and the publishers, people would usually be excited to have this become available for a larger audience.

Typically there's also when you negotiate these rights and when you publish something, there's also a percentage of potentially profit sharing or royalty sharing, so it also benefits ultimately the rights holder if they're interested in that as well, of course.

Jo: Yes, absolutely. Potentially earning from that.

Dani: And also having the book receive a wider readership, so that's where the benefit lies.

Jo: Yes, absolutely. It's very different to you doing this pretty obscure book compared to somebody saying, “Oh, this is a bestselling novel in English, let's turn it into Flemish,” because that's sometimes a lot more complicated.

Let's just finish the publication story. You find a publisher who's interested. Was this just then an easy process all the way to publication, or—

How was the publication process for you?

Dani: I will say… it was a learning process.

Jo: This is your first publication, right?

Dani: Yes, my first publication that's through a publisher that's not in an anthology or literary magazine. The publisher was great. It's a small publisher, Wayne State University Press. Great team, small team, but they were great in keeping me in the loop.

I had to complete a sales and marketing questionnaire to talk about ideas about how we would market the book. I had to do a design questionnaire and was able to share my ideas for the cover art, which I really enjoyed because it was fun.

I would go into bookstores and look around and look at covers and think about ideas. The final cover for Return to the Place I Never Left merges some elements of the original cover, which I really love. It has red and the barbed wire, and we kept that the same.

Then there's also a lot of white space, which I was intentional about because there's also a lot of white space on every page. I felt like it really reflects this modernized version of the book.

We went through these design and marketing decisions and then through copy edits and proof edits. It actually went pretty smoothly because it was already a completed manuscript when I presented it to them. Those parts went well.

It was fun to think of new things to generate when it came to sales and marketing and the cover, but when it came to the book itself and the copy edits and the proof edits, that went pretty fast.

Jo: Well, it's not like they're going to say, “We need you to improve the story in this way,” because as a translation, you're not making a change to the story. I also presume they couldn't read the original, so they couldn't really say to you, “Well, that's the wrong word.”

Dani: That's right.

Jo: Just on that sales and marketing, because most authors have a massive problem with this—

Is it basically down to you to do all the marketing?

Dani: A lot of it is, not all, but a lot of it is. The publisher will take some things on. They'll submit the book for reviews to several places. They'll sometimes share some ads that they've launched for the book in specific places.

I just recently came across a new prize for Jewish literature in translation, actually, given by an organization in the UK. I was able to contact my publisher and send it to them and ask them, “Hey, is this something that you could submit this book for?”

They will take that part on so I don't have to go and submit myself and send copies of the book myself. If I see an opportunity, I send it to them and see and ask them, “Was this on your radar already or not? Is this something you'll take care of or will I take care of it?”

They will do that, but I would say the majority falls on the author, or translator in this case, to really push it out into the world.

Jo: You made a lovely video. In fact, you pitched me for this and I went to watch your video and I think it's lovely. You've got a lovely voice, but you've got a lovely manner about you which comes across really well on video.

Is video something you do normally or is this something you've done specifically for the book?

Dani: This is something I've done specifically for the book. I kind of shy away from video specifically.

Jo: Oh, me too. I think you did a good job of talking about yourself, but also about the book and reading. I know it's hard, but I do think it's an effective way of breaking through when books are hard to market.

Dani: Thank you. I think one of the things that made that video work as well is that the director of that video is also a friend of mine and a creative collaborator. He was really good at teasing out some responses from me, I would say.

I generally get excited when I speak about the book and the translation process. There's so much to say about it. I really appreciate it.

As writers, we typically are very excited about the writing and the creation part, so I could talk about it for a very long time.

My friend, his name is Kofi, he's also a writer himself and a filmmaker. He was also very good at just asking specific questions and he also knows me and knows some parts of the stories.

He can look at it from an outsider perspective and then know, “Okay, this could be interesting to other people,” because there's some parts of the story that for me are just so normal that I don't really think somebody else would be interested in hearing this.

But he'd be the one to say, “Actually, let's talk about this a little bit more. I think people would be interested in that.” Sometimes I would think, “Really?”

Then later when people see the video, sometimes people come back and share some things that stood out to them in the video, and they're the things that I wouldn't have even put in that video myself because I would think this is normal, no one's going to care.

It's really helpful to have that outsider perspective, and when you have a good editor or director, they can really direct and pull out things from you and put them together in a way that would be interesting to the audience. I'm very grateful that's how that came together with two friends working on a project there.

Jo: I think from everything you've said, a lot of this has been based on relationships and tapping into your network, and I think that's really good and what you have to do, especially with a labor of love. I don't imagine this is going to make you like millions of dollars. I mean, it's just not the reality, is it?

Dani: We shall see. You never know.

Jo: The amount of work you've put in and the amount of work you're going to have to keep putting in to keep this book alive, I think is amazing. That's partly why I want to talk to you, because I feel like a lot of translation work is contracted by a publisher. It's not necessarily done in the way that you've done it.

Let's just briefly touch on the creative side of the translation. You said that you learned a lot, obviously, but that it enhanced a creative practice.

Just tell us a few things about the actual translation process and the literary challenges of that.

---

Dani: Happy to talk about this. Again, this was my very first time undertaking literary translation. So the first version was me translating it longhand. I wrote it in a notebook. I had the original book, and then I had my little notebook.

I translated it almost word for word. I wanted to stay as close to the original in this first version. Later I took my notes from my notebook and put them on my laptop and already started making some tweaks here and there.

You see a word and think, “Hmm, actually,” or sometimes I would notice, “Oh, I actually translated this with Flemish grammar, this doesn't quite read well in English.” So I start making those types of edits.

Over time, I would re-edit, reread the whole body of work and edit it. Over time, as I became more familiar with the text and started seeing certain things like, “Hmm, actually I feel like the way that this sentence is written, it kind of glosses over what's actually a really important moment.” So I made some choices there.

For example, the original, if you see the book, it has very little punctuation and only names and place names and people's names are capitalized. It reads almost like this stream of consciousness and it looks like poetry on the page. The original is the same way. That's where I got that style from.

I ended up pulling that style through a little bit more because there were some scenes in the original where I felt that you almost gloss over something that's really important.

I made deliberate choices to add some line breaks sometimes, or create more vignettes so that some parts were standalone. For example, when they get deported, or when scammers ring the doorbell pretending that they can get the daughter who's deported back to the family.

There were some moments that I felt could stand out a little bit more, and so those types of choices came in further editing rounds because I really wanted to honor this original text of this man who has passed away.

At the same time, I also wanted to really bring forth the meaning of the text as much as I could and make sure that it resonated with English readers as much as it did with me in reading it in Flemish.

Over time and later editing rounds, I saw that I became a little bit more comfortable in making those stylistic decisions to emphasize some things by changing words or adding a word or two, or removing a word or rejiggering a line.

That was challenging since I had no one to guide me through this, and so I had to think to myself —

What is the ultimate goal? Is it to stay as close as possible to the original text, or is it to make the translation as strong as possible?

What was helpful to me was to think about the fact that no two translations are the same. You have several classic novels that have been translated several times and some translations win awards.

What makes one translation better than the other? When I thought to myself about this, I realized, “Okay, it's okay to put some of myself into this piece.”

There are these two quotes by translators that I absolutely love. The first one is by Mark Polizzotti, who says, “When you read a translation, it doesn't mean it's a secondary experience. It doesn't mean that you're not reading the author. It means that you are reading the product of two authors: the original author and the translator who has to read the text, interpret it, and regenerate it in terms that make linguistic sense.“

There's another translator named Catherine Øhrgaard Jensen, who actually is now, I believe, the director of ALTA, which is an international organization for literary translators.

She calls a translated book “a sibling of the original, but not a twin.”

I love both of these quotes because they really show how the translation is, in a way, a collaboration. It is in a way being a conversation with the text of the original author and in some cases with the original author when the author is still alive.

Over time in later editing rounds, I was more comfortable in making these decisions and infusing a little bit more of myself and how I would approach this, how I would change this up a little bit to amplify this a little bit and make sure it reads well.

I made sure it presents well with the goal to honor the original text and make the English version as strong as the Flemish version. Once I was in that mode, I think the challenges, I wouldn't say fell away, but they became a lot more fun. Also because you're able to still be creative and really think of what is the perfect word here.

What words specifically would personify or would really highlight what this line means? Sometimes there's not a one-to-one translation either. Then you get to play around and really figure out, “Okay, which word do I use? Do I need two words to replace one?”

There's a lot. You have to really flex your creative muscles in ways that I hadn't really expected and in ways that I find have made me a better writer, even when I come back to my own projects.

You're so concerned with every single word. It's similar to poetry and to all good writing, really. We think about every word and what it evokes to the reader and how it looks on the page.

With translation, that is very true as well, in a way that I hadn't really expected when I started translating it. I didn't think that I would find so much joy and that I'd be able to be this creative when it came to word choice and sentence crafting.

Jo: It just sounds like a lovely process. I'm a kind of classic British person who doesn't speak any other languages, and I think it's really interesting.

I did want to just ask you about your thoughts on AI-assisted translation, because this is obviously becoming a big part of the industry now, in traditional publishing as well as in the self-publishing space. Obviously the type of book you are talking about is, like you said, more poetry. It's not a standard, just a novel, narrative novel.

What are your thoughts on AI assistance in translation?

Dani: I did not use it for Return to the Place I Never Left at all. I don't know that I would use it. I understand why people would use it, especially for a first draft potentially.

The reason that I would stay away from it personally is because I think even in that first draft, when you're taking words from one language into another, you become more familiar with the original text. So you're really rereading it from one language and putting it into English or the language that you're translating it in.

You already start forming ideas sometimes about certain words or certain things you might want to do or change when you're translating it. I think if I were to use an AI tool to take on even that earlier draft, it would already make assumptions for certain words.

As we mentioned, certain specific word choices can have such a big impact. Not every language has a one-to-one translation for every single word in a different language.

I think that process of becoming really intimately familiar with the original language and your first draft into the language you're translating in, I think that's actually quite important to do.

I would be nervous that AI would translate certain words, and then I would now look at the AI translation and base my translation off what AI already selected.

For some words, when you then look at the original, you might think, “Hmm, actually what the author meant is a little bit different from how AI translated it, but now I've given it the same meaning of the AI translation.” That's why I would personally be hesitant specifically when it comes to literary translation.

Now, for legal documents or marketing terms or anything, that's different. I'd probably leverage it, or I'd be open to leveraging it.

With literature and writing, we're so concerned with words and strong writing is so important at this time, I would not yet use it in my own translations. Who knows? That might change in the future.

Jo: Who knows. But I love that your process was so detailed, and as we said, you've put a lot of love into this project. Before we go, I am interested, are you done with translation? Like you mentioned you've got your MFA, you've got lots of other writing.

Are you now working on your own original work in English, or are you still open to other translation work?

Dani: Yes, I am still open to other translation work. Actually, someone already gave me a little booklet to consider. It is a short book also about a Holocaust survivor, and I do plan to do something with that one day, just not right now.

Right now I am working on a fictional novel and one thing I have learned is when you are publishing something, you're steeped in the subject matter for at least a year, I'd say around two from writing it or generating it.

Then if you have a publication deal, or if you're self-publishing, the proof edits, the copy edits, you're so knee deep in the subject matter.

When it comes to the topic, like the Holocaust, it was very challenging at some point. I actually took a break for about three years after I had finalized the manuscript before I ended up picking it back up and shopping it around because it was a pandemic, it was lockdown.

There was a lot going on, and it's a very, very heavy subject matter, especially when this is something that my family members went through. What I've learned now is you have to be so entrenched in the subject matter for so long.

I actually have two manuscripts that are far closer to completion, but they also deal with quite heavy subjects. I have decided to pursue a different project that is a little bit of a lighter subject matter. It has some humor in it, a little bit of romance, little bit of juiciness.

That is going to be my next project that I hope to complete and be able to find a home for by next year. After that one then I'll tackle one of those other more serious or a little bit darker subjects again.

Jo: I think that's good. It's good to have a break. I often do a nonfiction book in between thing. It kind of helps, but I guess you've done a nonfiction that was the heavy one. But no, that's great.

The book is Return to The Place I Never Left. Where can people find the book and find you and everything you do online?

Dani: Thank you. Return to the Place I Never Left can be found anywhere books are sold online, and also at DaniJames.co. That's my website. That's where you can order the book. That's where you can sign up for the newsletter. That's where I'll publish any upcoming events and readings. You can also find a link to my YouTube channel as well.

Jo: Brilliant. Well, thanks so much for your time, Dani. That was great.

Dani: Thank you so much. I just really want to take a moment to thank you because I absolutely love your channel. I found you through YouTube, by the way. That is where I mainly listen to your podcast.

I have to say, you have created such an incredible wealth of resources for writers. Every time I look at your videos, I have like ten videos that are in my queue that I want to listen to, and they're all so helpful.

Even though I know that you talk a lot about the journey of being self-published, it's so helpful—all the guests you have on, all the resources. I just wanted to thank you. I have shared your channel with several of my friends who are writing books as well and taking on other creative projects. Big, big thank you for doing this work.

Jo: Thanks so much.

The post The Art And Business Of Literary Translation With Dani James first appeared on The Creative Penn.