About Me.
​​With a lifelong passion for languages, literature and art, I offer expertise in literary translation and editorial commissions for galleries and museums, foundations, biennales, fairs, artists and curators.
As a wine-grower with a vineyard estate in Sonoma, California, I am also ideally suited as a consultant for French and Italian wineries, ensuring web and print materials are both engaging and idiomatic for an English-speaking audience.
In addition to translation work, The Grammar of Possibility website also showcases my original compositions and ongoing artistic collaboration with photographer, Stephanie Duprie Routh.
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I hope to spark some curiosity and appreciation for the worlds that words open in us all. ​
Profile
Dalya Sachs has authored several essays, translated Italian and French literature and is an experienced editor of academic and literary writing. She has given guest seminars on translation at UC Berkeley and the California College of Arts and Crafts, and has been an invited lecturer at UCLA, UC Berkeley, Oxford University and Northwestern University.
The Grammar of Possibility, Dalya’s inaugural series of poems commissioned as an artistic collaboration by photographer Stephanie Duprie Routh for the exhibition and book Dreams in Memories of Youth, has garnered acclaim and has been on view touring from Austin, Texas to New York City and San Francisco.
Dalya holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from UC Berkeley, where she taught for 7 years and earned recognition for outstanding teaching.
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EDUCATION
May 2000: University of California, Berkeley, Ph.D. in Comparative Literature (French, Italian, English & Latin)
May 1993: University of California, Berkeley, M.A. in Comparative Literature (French, Italian, English & Latin)
May 1991: University of California, Berkeley, B.A. in Comparative Literature (Italian & English)
ACADEMIC LECTURES & SEMINARS
April 2024: Lecturer, Northwestern University
Invited lecturer at Northwestern University, conference talk: “From Literature to Life: An Essayistic Testament” at the Northwestern University Research Initiative in Russian Philosophy, Literature, and Religious Thought, Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.
December 2011: Lecturer, Oxford University
Invited lecturer at the international conference on “Italo Svevo and his Legacy,” St.Hugh’s College, Oxford University, England.
Fall 2007 & 2009: Guest Lecturer, U.C. Berkeley
Guest Lecturer on literary translation in a graduate seminar taught by Robert Alter at U.C. Berkeley.
Fall Semester 2000: Guest Lecturer, California College of the Arts
Guest Lecturer for a series of seminars on Translation as a Literary Form, California College of the Arts.
May 2000: Cody’s Book, Berkeley, California
Invited reading and commentary on my translation of Italo Svevo’s Zeno’s Conscience.
February 1999: UCLA Center for Modern & Contemporary Studies
Panelist at Conference on “Translation and Academia.”
April 1995: Guest Lecturer, California College of the Arts
Lecture on “Montaigne & Musil: The Essayistic Imagination.”
Instructor, U.C. Berkeley 1993 - 2000
Throughout my graduate studies, I taught numerous Reading & Composition courses, as well as more advanced survey seminars on the Lyric, Modern Literature, the Novel as Genre. In May of 1998, I was honored with the UC Berkeley “Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award.”
WRITING
Doctoral Dissertation: Write for Me: 'Zeno's Conscience' and the Imperative of Self-Representation, May 2000.
Translation commission by Northwestern University Press: Zeno’s Conscience, by Italo Svevo, an annotated edition.
“The Language of Judgment: Primo Levi’s Se quest’è un uomo,” MLN 110.4 (1995): 755-784