Rachel Britton '18 (photos provided).
Rachel Britton '18, a writer/editor/translator, has published her first book of poems in translation from Icelandic, A Woman Looks Over Her Shoulder, by Brynja Hjálmsdóttir (Circumference Books, 2024). An excerpt of the translation also received the American-Scandinavian Foundation's Leif and Inger Sjöberg Prize in 2023.
“As a translator and technical writer, I am first and foremost a storyteller,” says Britton, who is pursuing an MA in translation studies from the University of Iceland in Reykjavík. “In the past few years, I have dedicated myself to translating Icelandic literature into English and studying language and various kinds of writing—poetic, technical—in an effort to help stories cross oceans.”
Britton, an English (creative writing) major at Geneseo, won a US Student Fulbright/Icelandic Ministry of Education and Culture Award for 2020–21. She studied modern Icelandic at the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies at the University of Iceland, focusing on the morphology, syntax, and phonetics of the language through old and modern literature as well as the history of Iceland from settlement to modern times.
“Rachel’s book of poems is wonderful, tracking both Icelandic mythology and the history of women's rights marches in Iceland, all beautifully translated and with a great translator's note,” says Lytton Smith, professor of English and poetry and a fellow Icelandic translator.
While at Geneseo, Britton joined Smith and Nick Warner, associate professor of geological, environmental, and planetary sciences, for a four-week study abroad program in Iceland that combined geological sciences, creative writing, and environmental studies.
“I am grateful for the support I received from SUNY Geneseo, especially the English department,” says Britton. “I was so fortunate to have studied with the incredible faculty there.”