Tonight at 8:00 p.m., the country’s preeminent English-to-Spanish translator, Edith Grossman, speaks alongside Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Galway Kinnel. She has translated Mario Vargas Llosa, Mayra Montero, Ariel Dorfman, and all of Gabriel García Márquez’s works since Love in the Time of Cholera. Her translation of Cervantes’ Don Quixote had everybody from Carlos Fuentes to Harold Bloom singing her praises. She took a few minutes to chat with the Free Library Blog.

1. What role have libraries played in your life?

“The library that had the greatest impact on my life was at the University of Pennsylvania, where as an undergraduate and graduate student I had access to its open stacks. I think the books I discovered on my endless wanderings past those shelves had as much to do with my education as formal classes.”

2. What was your favorite childhood book?

“The books I read over and over again when I was a child included a book about Robin Hood, one about King Arthur (I can’t remember the titles), and Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women and Little Men. I also recall loving Jack London’s The Call of the Wild.”

3. How did you come to the decision to be a writer?

“I never really thought about being a writer, though I did write poems when I was a child, and books have been crucially important to me all my life. I began translating rather serendipitously; being a translator was not the ambition of my youth.”

4. Who are the three authors you think everyone should be required to read-which books would you start with?

“I think three overwhelmingly important books are Don Quixote (I believed this even before I translated it), Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, and George Orwell’s 1984. There are many more, or course?

5. If you couldn’t write, what other job would you like to have?

“If I weren’t a translator, I’d love to be a musician-probably a blues singer.”