Authors and translators
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Susanna Bissoli
Author of I folgorati
Susanna Bissoli is the author of the short story collection Caterina sulla soglia (Terre di Mezzo, 2009), the novel Le parole che cambiano tutto (Terre di Mezzo, 2011), and several plays. She teaches oral storytelling as a tool for cultural mediation. I folgorati was shortlisted for the Ortebello Prize in Italy.
Praise for I folgorati:
Susanna handles illness and pain while remaining miraculously joyful —Paolo Cognetti
A family story, universal and intimate, poetic and persuasive… a meta-novel full of grace that seeps into the readers’ hearts and beats page after page. A fluorescent bolt of lightening. —La Stampa
An intense literary novel… at once sparkling and intense in its expressive vivacity. —Il Corriere della Sera
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Magdalena Blažević
Author of In Late Summer
Magdalena Blažević, born in Žepce in 1982, is a writer from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Her short stories have been translated into several languages and awarded numerous prizes. In Late Summer, winner of the 2022/2023 Tportal Award for Best Croatian Novel, is her debut novel.Praise for In Late Summer:
A shockingly powerful and authentic voice dominates, a poetic howl stronger than any brutal and naturalistic representation of war. —Elizabeta Hrstić
An outstanding anti-war novel, in which war is scarcely mentioned. —Josip Mlakić
A beautiful and terrifying book about a female world, consistently told until the end from the women’s perspective. —Miljenko Jergović
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Agnès de Clairville
Author of Corps de ferme
Agnès de Clairville was born in Normandy and now lives in Marseille. A scientist by profession, she worked in photography before devoting herself to writing. Corps de ferme is her second novel.
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Małgorzata Lebda
Author of Voracious
Małgorzata Lebda is well-known as a poet with eight collections to her name. Among other major accolades, she won the prestigious Wisława Szymborska Award in 2022. Voracious, her debut novel, is the winner of Empik’s Best Newcomer in Poland and is shortlisted for the Angelus Prize, the Conrad Prize and the NIKE Award. Małgorzata Lebda is also a photographer and marathon runner - she ran a distance of 1,113 kilometres along the Vistula River as part of her activism/poetry project Reading Water.
Praise for Voracious:
Lebda’s prose is exceptional - she has successfully created a microcosmos where everything is interconnected, dying and full of life at the same time. —Polityka
Lebda has a rare and fabulous sense of language, of the meaning of words, a way of anchoring and transforming them. —Gazeta Wyborcza
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Antonia Lloyd-Jones
Translator of Voracious and Not There
Antonia Lloyd-Jones translates fiction, non-fiction, poetry and children’s books from Polish. Her translation of Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by 2018 Nobel Prize laureate Olga Tokarczuk was shortlisted for the 2019 Man Booker International prize. For ten years she was a mentor for the Emerging Translators’ Mentorship Programme, and is a former co-chair of the UK Translators Association. -
Anđelka Raguž
Translator of In Late Summer
Anđelka Raguž migrated to Australia with her parents at the end of the 1960s and moved back to Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1990. She has been teaching English Literature at the University of Mostar for the past twenty years. In Late Summer is her first literary translation. -
Mariusz Szczygieł
Author of Not There
Mariusz Szczygieł is one of Europe’s most celebrated journalists. A reporter for Gazeta Wyborcza, he is the author of a number of books of reportage about the Czech Republic and Poland. His books have been published in twenty-one countries and have been awarded the Europe Book Prize and the Prix Amphi, among other honours. From 1995–2001, he hosted a popular talk show on Polish television. Szczygieł runs the Institute of Reportage in Warsaw, a creative writing reportage school, and Dowody na Isnienie, an independent publishing house. Not There won the Nike Award and Nike Readers' Award in Poland on publication in 2018.
Praise for Gottland:
One of those delightfully unclassifiable books... Szczygieł is strange and funny, constantly off at jaunty tangents. —Julian Barnes, Book of the Year, The Guardian
Extraordinary... Gottland is one of the funniest books I have read and one of the shrewdest about what it was like to live under fascism and communism, the experience of so much of Europe in the last century. It is not about Czechoslovakia or Poland or even limited to Mitteleuropa, but about how one copes with tyranny and corruption and preserves a conscience... Important and enjoyable. —The Spectator
Many of the stories in Mariusz Szczygieł's portrait of Czechoslovakia could have come from the pages of Kafka... Absorbing, offbeat history. —The Financial Times
Non-fiction stories from Czechoslovakia, which show a country more fantastical than even its wildest literature led us to believe. —The Guardian
Gottland offers an indelible account of the ravages of 20th-century totalitarianism and the way it continues to pollute human thought and behavior in the 21st century. —New York Times -
Georgia Wall
Translator of I folgorati
Georgia Wall is a translator and creative workshop facilitator. She also works part-time as publishing manager for a small independent press. She lives in Birmingham, UK.
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Frank Wynne
Translator of Corps de ferme
Frank Wynne is a literary translator. Born in Ireland, he moved to France in 1984 where he discovered a passion for language. He began translating literature in the late 1990s, and in 2001 decided to devote himself to this full time. He has translated works by, among others, Michel Houellebecq, Frédéric Beigbeder, Ahmadou Kourouma, Boualem Sansal, Claude Lanzmann, Tómas Eloy Martínez and Almudena Grandes. His work has earned him a number of awards, including the Scott Moncrieff Prize and the Premio Valle Inclán. Most recently, his translation of Vernon Subutex was shortlisted for the 2018 International Booker Prize. He was the Chair of the judges for Booker International in 2022.