Aleksandar Hemon - Best European Fiction 2013

FLORIN BICANhas published English translations in Britain, Ireland, the United States, Singapore, and Romania. His translations from English into Romanian include Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark and T. S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats . Since 2006 Florin Bican has been in charge of the Romanian Cultural Institute program “Translators in the Making.”

ALISTAIR IAN BLYTHlives in Bucharest and has translated fiction, poetry, and philosophy by writers from Romania and the Republic of Moldova. The authors he has translated include Max Blecher, Gellu Naum, Ion Creanga, Filip Florian, Lucian Dan Teodorovici, Bogdan Suceava, Iulian Ciocan, and Constantin Noica.

CHRISTOPHER BUXTONfirst came to Bulgaria in 1977 as an English teacher. He has had three novels published in Bulgaria: Far from the Danube , Prudence and the Red Baron , and Radoslava and the Viking Prince . He has translated a significant number of classic and contemporary Bulgarian texts including new work for the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation. He maintains a website at www.christopherbuxton.com.

MARGARET JULL COSTAhas been a literary translator for over twenty years, translating, among others, Javier Marías, Eça de Queiroz, and Bernardo Atxaga. Her work has brought her various prizes, the most recent of which was the 2011 Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize for The Elephant’s Journey by José Saramago.

VICTORIA CRIBBwas born in England but lived in Iceland for several years. Her translations from Icelandic include Stone Tree by Gyrðir Elíasson and From the Mouth of the Whale by Sjón, which was shortlisted for the UK Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2012. She is currently pursuing a doctorate at the University of Cambridge.

JENNIFER CROFTis a writer and translator of Spanish, Polish, and Ukrainian. She is a founding editor of The Buenos Aires Review.

ROBERT FERGUSONis a renowned translator of Scandinavian literature. He has also written biographies of Nobel Laureate-winning author Knut Hamsun, author Henry Miller, and playwright Henrik Ibsen.

WILL FIRTHwas born in 1965 in Newcastle, Australia. He studied German and Slavic languages in Canberra, Zagreb, and Moscow. Since 1991 he has been living in Berlin, Germany, where he works as a freelance translator of literature and the humanities. He translates from Russian, Macedonian, and all variants of Serbo-Croatian.

MARGITA GAILITISwas born in Riga, Latvia, and grew up in Canada. In 1998 she returned to Latvia to work on a Canadian International Development Agency-sponsored project translating Latvian laws into English. Her poetry has been published in Canada and the US, and she is the recipient of Ontario Arts and Canada Council awards. In 2011, she was awarded the Order of the Three Stars by the President of Latvia.

ROGER GREENWALD, an American poet and translator based in Toronto, has won the CBC Literary Award twice (poetry, travel literature). His books include Connecting Flight (poems); and the translations Through Naked Branches: Selected Poems of Tarjei Vesaas; North in the World: Selected Poems of Rolf Jacobsen, winner of the Lewis Galantière Award; Picture World , by Niels Frank; and A Story about Mr. Silberstein, a novel by Erland Josephson.

JEAN HARRIShas published fiction, literary criticism, translations, book reviews, and literary dispatches. She won a translation grant from UC-I’s International Center for Writing and Translation for her work on Ştefan Bănulescu’s Mistretii erau blazi. She has directed the Observer Translation Project at translations.observatorcultural.ro, which translates Romanian fiction into numerous languages.

CELIA HAWKESWORTHis emerita Senior Lecturer in Serbian and Croatian at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College, London. She has published numerous articles and several books on Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian literature, including the studies Ivo Andric: Bridge between East and West , Voices in the Shadows: Women and Verbal Art in Serbia and Bosnia, and Zagreb: A Cultural History . She has translated numerous works from Serbo-Croatian, including Vedrana Rudan’s Night and several books by Dubravka Ugresic.

HILDI HAWKINSis a writer and translator and the London Editor of Books from Finland. She is also the editor of things magazine, a journal of writings about objects, their pasts, presents, and futures.

ELIZABETH HEIGHWAYis a literary and medical translator. She was educated at the Universities of Oxford and Chicago, and holds an MA in Translation Studies from the University of Birmingham. She translates from Georgian and French, and is the editor and translator of Dalkey Archive Press’s Contemporary Georgian Fiction .

AARON KERNERis a freelance writer and translator from German, French, and Spanish.

AMY KERNERlives in Rhode Island, where she is working toward a PhD in Modern European History at Brown University. She translates from German and Spanish.

VIJA KOSTOFFFis a linguist by education, and a language teacher, writer, and editor by profession. She has been collaborating with Margita Gailitis for more than ten years in translating the novels, short storeis, plays, film scripts, and poetry of many of Latvia's major writers. Born in Latvia, she now resides in Niagra on the Lake, Ontario, Canada where she exercises her secondary passions for gardening and painting.

SOILA LEHTONENis a journalist and theater critic, and currently Editor-in-Chief of Books from Finland . She edited a collection of writings about the city of Helsinki together with Hildi Hawkins, Helsinki: A Literary Companion.

DAVID LIMONtranslates literature for children and adults from Slovenian into English. His translations include the prize winning novels Fužine Blues by Andrej Skubic and Iqball Hotel by Boris Kolar. He is Associate Professor at the Department of Translation at the University of Ljubljana.

ILMAR LEHTPEREis Kristiina Ehin’s official English-language translator. He has translated nine books by her, both prose and poetry, including the Poetry Society Popescu Prize winner The Drums of Silence (2007) and the Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation The Scent of Your Shadow (2010). He has also translated her dramatic works and radio broadcasts. His translations of Kristiina Ehin’s work appear regularly in leading English-language literary magazines and his collaboration with her is ongoing.

OKSANA MAKSYMCHUKwas born in Lviv, Ukraine. She moved to the United States when she was fifteen years old. She began translating Ukrainian and Russian poetry as a student at Bryn Mawr College, and has also published two books of her own poetry in Ukrainian: Gifts to the Host (2005) and The Chase (2008). In 2004 and 2007 she was the recipient of prestigious Ukrainian literary awards for young authors; since 2006, she has been living in Chicago and pursuing a doctorate in philosophy at Northwestern University.

RHETT MCNEILhas published numerous translations from Portuguese and Spanish, including short fiction by Machado de Assis and Enrique Vila-Matas, and novels by Gonçalo M. Tavares, A. G. Porta, and António Lobo Antunes.

RACHEL MCNICHOLLstudied, lived and worked in Switzerland and Germany before returning to her native Ireland. Her career path has covered academic research, teaching translation at university, journalism, in-house book editing, and literary translation. Recent short-story translations from German include “England, I Set Foot on You in Heels” by Lydia Mischkulnig, in Zwei Wochen England , and “Belyed: A Fishy Story” by Gabriele Haefs in Short Fiction in Theory and Practice. She has also translated work by Klaus Modick, Nadja Spiegel, Yoko Tawada, and Sigrid Weigel.