March 29, 2025: Book launch featuring Michael Kilburn, Eva Turnová, and Jonathan Bolton
Dear friends of Czech Café,
We are pleased to announce a new translation by one of Czech Café close members, Michael Kilburn, of a book by the well-known writer, artist, and musician Eva Turnová.
The translation of Eva Turnová’s columns, I’m Dead; Leave a message, will be launched on Saturday, March 29, 2025, from 3 to 5pm, at Harvard University, Boylston Hall 105.
The translator Michael Kilburn will be present, with Eva Turnová on Zoom. Professor Jonathan Bolton, from Harvard’s Slavic Department, will moderate the event.
The conversation will be followed by a small reception.
Eva Turnová is a writer, artist, and musician. She played bass guitar and sang in underground bands such as DG 307, Mejla Hlavsa’s Šílenství, The Plastic People of the Universe, and her own band Eturnity, Terrible Twos (with Lucia Piussia) and the luftpunk duo Rozkoš with the distinctive musician Vladivojna La Chia.
Eva graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy at Charles University in Prague, majoring in Czech and English. She translated Mark Vonnegut’s book The Eden Express, the film version of Red Dwarf, and several other films and scripts. She has appeared in films by Jan Hřebejk, Petr Zelenka, and Viktor Tauš, and composed music for films by Igor Chaun and Tobiáš Jirous. She contributes to magazines like Reflex, Reportér, Respekt, and Deník.cz. and also publishes her commentaries on the radio station Český rozhlas Plus (former Radio Free Europe) in the program Opinions and Arguments. Eva has published eleven volumes of her column Turnový háj and recorded an audiobook Readings from Turnový háj. A selection of her columns was published by the Argo publishing house under the title BE100F. In 2018, her columns were adapted into a play by Divadlo Husa na provázku. Last year, she published her first short story collection titled V zimě se u nás netopýr. More info at https://evaturnova.cz/
Michael Kilburn is a Professor of Political Science and International Studies at Endicott College in Beverly, MA and a lifelong amateur Bohemianist. He first visited Czechoslovakia on a whim and a one speed bicycle in 1985 and has made many revisits over the ensuing 40 years for both professional and personal reasons. His 2001 dissertation, “The Merry Ghetto: The Czech Underground in the time of Normalization” (Institute of the Liberal Arts, Emory University) was the first doctoral research on alternative/”second” culture under late socialism in Czechoslovakia. He has published and presented widely on the topic of the Czech Underground, dissent, human rights, anarchism, oral history, and geography. He studied Czech language peripatetically at Norwich University, Charles University, and Harvard. With Eva Turnova, he has translated film subtitles, interviews, lyrics, and promotional material.
Jonathan Bolton is a Professor of Czech Literature at Harvard’s Slavic Department. His many publications include a study of Czech dissidence, Worlds of Dissent. He translates Czech prose and poetry and edited and translated two books of poems: In the Puppet Gardens: Selected Poems, 1963-2005, by Ivan Wernisch (Michigan Slavic Publications, 2007), and Everything Indicates: Selected Poems, by Petr Hruška (Blue Diode press). His translations have appeared in Dalkey Archive’s Best European Fiction 2018, as well as in Modern Poetry in Translation, Circumference: Poetry in Translation, BODY: Poetry, Prose, Word, Apofenie, and elsewhere.
I’m Dead; Leave a message is now available for US distribution. It features 101 feuilletons originally published by the Prague publishing house Argo. The cost is $20 including postage and handling. Each copy is signed by the author. Please contact co-translator Michael Kilburn (mkilburn@endicott.edu) for ordering and more information.