On August 27th, 2024, Dr. Rohan Chhetri published an English translation of Avinash Shrestha’s poetry collection The Dust Draws Its Face on the Wind, for which he was awarded a PEN/Heim Translation Grant in 2021. Chhetri’s translation of The Dust Draws Its face on the Wind is the first translation of a Nepali poetry collection to be widely available in English. Chhetri is a Postdoctoral Fellow in TCU's English Department.

Avinash Shrestha, who immigrated from India to Nepal in 1984, was originally familiar with Assamese, Bengali, Hindi and Urdu literary traditions, but soon was influenced by Nepali political movements and contemporary poetic traditions. Shrestha’s poetry mixes “high” and “low” registers of Nepali diction and draws from Hindu liturgical tradition and Vedic cosmology to disrupt traditional Nepali poetic expectations. Chhetri’s work as a translator bridges Shrestha’s and his own poetic voices, allowing the translated poems to occupy a space of their own.  

"In the end, my work was that of a negotiator, to facilitate and contain this contentious meeting of the two languages and cultures in the translated text." — Rohan Chhetri

Following his work translating The Dust Draws Its Face on the Wind, Chhetri plans to continue translating works of Nepali poetry and fiction into English, which he hopes will bring Nepali poetry to a new, wider audience.  

Read more about the PEN/HEIM Translation Grant awarded to Chhetri here. 

Read Chhetri's interview with Neeraja Srinivasan for Platform Magazine here.