Prairie Lights: Tabatha Leggett in conv with Jan Steyn – Enchantment

University of Iowa Literary Translation MFA candidate Tabatha Leggett will read from her translation of Riikka Pulkkinen’s novel, Enchantment, and will be joined in conversation with Jan Steyn. Described as “a spellbinding literary mystery that explores the uneasy terrain of girlhood, where one is always being watched, shaped, and judged by others” (scribepublications.com), Enchantment is praised by Shelf Awareness as “a striking novel about girlhood, perception, and death,” while Catherine Airey, author of Confessions, says: “An intricate tapestry of a novel by a masterful writer. Enchantment’s real triumph is its investigation into what we mean to one another as imperfect people.”

Tabatha Leggett is a writer and literary translator from North Wales. She is a current Iowa Arts Fellow at the University of Iowa’s Literary Translation MFA program and a graduate of New York University’s Fiction MFA programme, where she was an Axinn Fellow. Enchantment is her debut translation.

Jan Steyn is a writer, scholar, and translator working from Afrikaans, French, and Dutch. His forthcoming translations include Wilma Stockenström’s Abjater’s Laughter and two books by Ronelda Kamfer, the novel Compound and the poetry volume soil/Santekraam. He is the author of Jig (Sylph Editions, 2026) and editor of Translation: Crafts, Contexts, Consequences (Cambridge, 2022). He teaches at the University of Iowa, where he directs the MFA in Literary Translation.