Ilze Duarte Literary Translator
Ilze Duarte was born and raised in São Paulo, Brazil. She graduated from Universidade de São Paulo with a bachelor’s degree in English Language and Literature, followed by a graduate-level degree in English/Portuguese translation. She holds a master’s degree in Teaching English as a Second Language and a PhD in Speech Communication from Pennsylvania State University.
Ilze lives in Milpitas, California, where she writes short prose and translates literary fiction by contemporary Brazilian authors into English. Her original work has been published in New Plains Review, Dear Damsels, Please See Me, FlashFood, and Thanatos Review. Her translations appear in Words Without Borders, Michigan Quarterly Review, Latin American Literature Today, MAYDAY Magazine, Asymptote Journal, Exchanges Journal, Northwest Review, Columbia Journal, Massachusetts Review, Ambit, and Your Impossible Voice. She has essays on translation in Hopscotch Translation.
She is a recipient of the 2024 Sundial Literary Translation Award, which included the publication of her translation of Marilia Arnaud's short story collection The Book of Affects.
In 2025, Ilze was honored to be one of five judges for the American Literary Translators Award in Prose .
Ilze is an author-member of Betty Books, an imprint of WTAW Press. Betty Books will publish her short story collection The Heart Beats Faster in 2027.
São Paulo, Brazil | Photo by Georgia Visacri on Unsplash
