Cordasco, Rachel S
Entry updated 14 April 2025. Tagged: Author, Translator.
(1982- ) US independent scholar and translator focusing on SF in Translation (henceforth SFT). Cordasco earned a PhD in Literary Studies in 2010; after working as a lecturer and then editor for several years, she transitioned into independent writing, first reviewing SFT for John DeNardo's SF Signal. In May 2016, Cordasco launched SFinTranslation.com, a site dedicated to cataloguing and promoting Speculative Fiction written in languages other than English and published in English translation. The site continues the work of author, editor, and translator Lavie Tidhar, whose World SF Blog (2009-2013) (see World SF) led to the publication of five volumes of The Apex Book of World SF, and three subsequent volumes of The Best of World SF (#2 including Cordasco's translation of Italian sf author Clelia Farris's "The Substance of Ideas"). Cordasco has written reviews, essays, and academic articles for the ELN Riveter, Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, Locus, SFRA Review (see Science Fiction Research Association), Strange Horizons, Studies in the Fantastic, Tor.com, Words Without Borders and World Literature Today. She has also contributed chapters to Ian Campbell's Science Fiction in Translation: Perspectives on the Global Theory and Practice of Translation (anth 2021) and Glyn Morgan's Science Fiction: Voyage to the Edge of Imagination (anth 2022).
In 2021, Cordasco published the first book dedicated solely to educating lay readers and scholars about SF in translation, entitled Out of This World: Speculative Fiction in Translation from the Cold War to the New Millennium (2021). This focuses on 14 source languages from which speculative fiction has appeared in English since 1960, with each chapter introduced by a scholar, translator, or author from the relevant country/language tradition. The forthcoming sequel will focus on underrepresented languages from the rest of the world.
Cordasco has also translated over a dozen works of Italian speculative fiction (see Italy), most notably stories by Clelia Farris. In 2021 she received the Rosetta Award, and in 2022, the Space Cowboy Award for her work in SF in translation. [RSCo]
Rachel Shawn Cordasco
born Baltimore, Maryland: 27 October 1982
works
nonfiction
- Out of This World: Speculative Fiction in Translation from the Cold War to the New Millennium (Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2021) [hb/uncredited]
works as translator
- Clelia Farris. Creative Surgery (Greenbelt, Maryland: Rosarium Publishing, 2020) [coll: trans by Cordasco with Jennifer Delare: pb/]
links
previous versions of this entry