Judith Small, author of Second Tongue, is an award-winning poet and member of the Volunteer Interpreters' Panel of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area.  Since 2004 she has served as an interpreter and translator for French-speaking asylum seekers from North and West Africa, referred by Lawyers' Committee and Human Rights First. An experienced teacher of French and English, she coordinated the after-school Peer Interpreters Program at Oakland's Castlemont High School, where bilingual students from immigrant families learned the fundamentals of interpreting as they supported newcomer students and their families. More…