Olivia E. Sears

Olivia E. Sears is a poet, literary translator, and editor. She received her BA from Yale University and a PhD in Italian literature from Stanford University, where she founded Two Lines: A Journal of Translation. 

Sears’s original writing on the natural world has appeared in multimedia collaborations with various visual artists, including Earl Flewellen, Aline Mare, and Samuel Spurrier. Her current translations from Italian focus on poetry from the past century— from early Dada poetry to avant-garde writing from the 1960s and 1970s to contemporary work by the dramatist Mariangela Gualtieri. Sears published the first translation of the 1915 experimental work Simultaneities and Lyric Chemisms by Italian Futurist painter and poet Ardengo Soffici with World Poetry Books in 2022. 

Sears is also founder of the Center for the Art of Translation, which includes the award-winning publisher Two Lines Press, the educational program Poetry Inside Out, and a literary event center and bookstore in downtown San Francisco. 

Sears chairs the board of the Center for the Art of Translation and serves on the editorial board of Two Lines Press. A long-time musician, she has performed and recorded music from West Java with Indonesian gamelan ensemble Pusaka Sunda for almost thirty years.