Edie Adams

Edith (Edie) Adams is an Assistant Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at Bowdoin College, where she teaches Spanish classes across all levels, as well as more advanced courses on translation and contemporary Indigenous poetics. She specializes in translation theory and practice and in 20th and 21st-century Latin American literatures, with a focus on contemporary Mapuche literature and art.  

Across her scholarly and creative work, Adams is interested in the relationship between translation, colonization, and knowledge formation. Her current research project examines the centrality of translation in Mapuche poetics, language, and thought. Adams is also a literary translator from Spanish to English, with a particular passion for translating contemporary poetry from Latin America and perspectives that are underrepresented in U.S. publishing. Her debut translation of Daniela Catrileo’s Guerrilla Blooms (Eulalia Books, 2024) was a semi-finalist for the 2025 National Translation Award in Poetry and a finalist for the Northern California Book Award. Other translations of Catrileo’s work have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and selected for publication in Best Literary Translations 2024 (Deep Vellum) and Daughters of Latin America: An International Anthology of Writing by Latine Women (HarperCollins). 

Adams’s translations have also been featured in a wide variety of literary journals, including Guernica, Latin American Literature Today, New England Review, Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas, and Words Without Borders, as well as the recent anthology, La Lucha: Latin American Feminism Today (Charco Press). She holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture from the University of Southern California, an M.A. in Translation Research and Instruction from SUNY Binghamton, and a B.A. in Hispanic Studies from Scripps College, where she graduated summa cum laude. She is an alumna of the Banff International Literary Translation Centre and the Bread Loaf Translators’ Conference, where she was a Rona Jaffe Foundation Fellow.  

Adams also loves teaching, especially the amazing students here at Bowdoin. As a Spanish teacher, her courses highlight the diverse cultures and languages that comprise the Spanish-speaking world. She does so by contextualizing this diversity alongside complex histories of colonization and migration to help students think critically about the relationship between language, culture, conquest and power. She also loves working with students and encourages anyone interested in Spanish, literature, or translation to reach out any time.