Since its original publication in Danish, Emma Holten’s Deficit: How Feminist Economics Can Change Our World has become an international bestseller and been translated into more than 10 languages. The book is a powerful introduction to feminist economics (which is what you call economics when it actually acts like a body of knowledge that corresponds to reality) and the chronic neglect of care in capitalist societies.

In conversation with the book’s English language translator, Sherilyn Nicolette Hellberg, and the cultural critic, Macon Holt, Emma will unfold some of the important ideas, perspectives and struggles from her book and reflect on how these ideas travel and make an impact in translation.

Emma Holten is a feminist activist and gender policy consultant. In 2014, she created the project CONSENT, raising awareness of digital sexual violence. Since 2019, she has worked with feminist economics. She served on the European Institute of Gender Equality Experts Forum as an expert in feminist economics and on Human Rights Watch’s advisory committee on Women’s Rights. In 2023, she was appointed as advisor to the Danish government’s investigation of power in Denmark.

Sherilyn Nicolette Hellberg is a writer and literary translator based in Copenhagen. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker and the Paris Review, among other places, and her translation of Jonas Eika’s After the Sun from the Danish was longlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley.

Macon Holt is a writer, critic, teacher and cultural theorist. He is the author of Pop Music and Hip Ennui: A Sonic Fiction of Capitalist Realism. He has a PhD in Cultural Studies from Goldsmiths, University of London and runs the coaching and advisory service Aesthetic Theory.

Copies of Deficit: How Feminist Economics Can Change Our World will be available for purchase and signing.

Fuss fee: 50kr