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Translator bio:

Richard Coombes translates from Russian and Ukrainian into English. Recent publications include poetry in the bilingual anthologies ‘Disbelief’ and ‘Dislocation’, Elena Dolgopyat’s short story collection ‘Someone Else’s Life’, and Alexei Ivanov’s novel ‘The Food Block’.

Website: https://richardcoombeslanguageservices.com/
Bluesky: @richtranslator.bsky.social

Currently, Richard is collaborating with the Ukrainian novelist Anna Bugayeva, and translating the Ukrainian poetess Maryna Ponomarenko and other contemporary Ukrainian poets. The ‘Disbelief’ and ‘Dislocation’ team is also preparing a third anthology. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Richard has been teaching English to Ukrainian refugees and running conversation clubs and other language coaching sessions for Ukrainians in the UK, Ukraine, and other European countries.

Author bio:

Maryna Ponomarenko lives and works in Kyiv. She has a degree in Dramatic Writing for Film and Television, and she is a contemporary poetess who gives regular live performances of her work. Her second poetry collection has just been published by Ukraine’s Old Lion Publishing House.

Neben Fremden by Eva Schmidt takes the form of a series of reminiscences by Rosa, told to us as she sits on her balcony in the autumn of the present day. It is all about Rosa’s encounters with people and the influence these encounters have on Rosa and on the people she comes to know. Her reminiscences begin with a scene on that same balcony that occurred a few months after her partner’s death.

We find out more and more about Rosa through the various stages of personal development she goes through as the novel progresses: meeting and getting to know her partner, Fred; the latter’s death; becoming acquainted with her initially nameless downstairs neighbour; becoming a confidante to the neighbour’s teenage daughter; Rosa’s retirement from working at a senior care home; coming to terms with her own family relationships; and taking in an abandoned dog and having to put her own beloved, elderly dog to sleep, to name just a handful of those experiences. The biggest revelation is that Rosa has an estranged son, born when she was a teenage runaway.

By the time this son, now in his fifties, writes unexpectedly after many years of silence, Rosa has come to realise that there is no need to live a solitary life, with a dog as her closest friend, because people do matter to her – and there are people for whom she is now important as well, who were once strangers with untold struggles and personal histories of their own. After years of coping with personal trauma, she arrives at the conclusion summarised in the novel’s closing line: Mein Leben ist auch ein Leben: My life is a life too.

Press quotes:

Eva Schmidt masters the art of the terse, situative emphasis. In a handful of lines she sketches how wide the chasm is between self-awareness and awareness of the outer world - Deutschlandfunk Kultur, 12 September 2025
https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/eva-schmidt-neben-fremden-102.html


Eva Schmidt is perhaps the most brilliant underrated author in the German-speaking literature business. She writes concise books of great linguistic precision. Neither her settings nor her protagonists are spectacular, but her gift of observation, empathy and wisdom are distinctive to an unparalleled degree.

Each of her books is a sensation, regardless of its subject, although the author mainly attends to people's crises of life and loneliness. That was the case in her novel “Ein langes Jahr”, published in 2016. Schmidt celebrated her comeback with it after 20 years. It told of a damaged lives on a desolate housing estate in a roundelay of miniatures and was shortlisted for the Deutscher Buchpreis. Neben Fremden is of this tradition. Tentatively, gently tracing her characters’ hurts, Eva Schmidt asks who are we to judge whether or not a life is a fulfilled one. - SWR Bestenliste, 30.12.2025 (94 points)
https://www.swr.de/kultur/literatur/bestenliste-2026-01-02-102.html

Alexandra Cox qualified with a Master's in Translation from German and French in 2001. Her dissertation was on the standard French translation of James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Born in the UK, she has been living working as a freelance translator in Germany since 2003. She is a member of ITI and the Translators Association at the SoA. Alexandra has translated multiple publications in the area of literary non-fiction, where she specialises in art and culture. These publications include art catalogues and monographs for exhibitions in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. When it comes to literary fiction, her interest lies in tales about people and (family) relationships, in stories told with empathy.

Eva Schmidt was born in 1952 and lives in Bregenz. She has written radio dramas, short stories and novels, of which Neben Fremden is her fourth. Her second novel, Ein langes Jahr, was published in 2016 and shortlisted for the Deutscher Buchpreis.

A humorous and deeply human short story collection that celebrates outsiders, dreamers, and the queer.

The award-winning Slovak writer Barbora Hrínová’s short stories paint an intimate portrait of people searching for happiness in a world that feels increasingly unstable and uncertain. Across the eight stories in this volume, we meet a rich cast of ordinary yet unconventional people trying to find their place in a society that often prefers conformity over authenticity. Taking us to such settings as a bustling cafe, a small village shack, a rental flat, or a psychiatric ward, Hrínová captures the texture of everyday life with piercing accuracy and a fresh, original voice.

Unicorns is a remarkable debut that resonates across generations. With compassion, wit, and an eye for detail, it shows us that weirdness isn’t rare—it’s a universal human experience.

The story Chemistry follows the (mis)adventures of Bonifác, known as Boni, as he looks for a partner. He is frequently rejected – but the women who are interested in him all have something to hide.

BUY THE BOOK: https://seagullbooks.org/products/unicorns

Isabel Stainsby is a translator (literary/commercial) from Czech, Slovak, German and occasionally French into English. She studied languages and linguistics at Cambridge and Bristol, with a year in the Czech city of Olomouc, then tried out various careers before becoming a freelance translator. She has translated twelve books so far, plus a number of chapters, short stories and articles. Languages are her passion; she also speaks reasonable Russian, a bit of Scottish Gaelic, and is currently learning Hungarian. Translation is her vocation. She lives in Glasgow, Scotland, with her husband.

Barbora Hrínová studied at the Film and TV Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava, where she now teaches in the Screenwriting Department. She has conducted postdoctoral research on contemporary film at Ilia State University in Tbilisi and spent time at a university in California. A three-time finalist for the Poviedka short-story award, Hrínová also produces radio documentaries for Slovak and Czech national broadcasting. Unicorns is her debut short-story collection, marking a powerful entrance for a fresh and original voice in European literature. Unicorns won the Anasoft Litera, Slovakia's most prestigious literary prize, in 2021, and her novel Plachý dom (The Shy House), published to great acclaim in 2025, has been nominated for the Anasoft Litera 2026.

Three generations of women: Téta, the grandmother, Fadwa, the mother, and Emné, the daughter who captures the tenderness of her fore-bearers. The poems in this collection recall and restore a family lineage broken by war, death and exile.

BUY THE BOOK: https://www.the87press.co.uk/shop/p/the-dance-of-the-fig-tree-emne-nasereddine

Stuart Bell is a writer, editor, and translator of French literature. His publications include the edited volumes ‘French Cinema: Stardom, Gender and Popular Film’ (2026), ‘On Feminist Films’ (2024) and ‘Moving Impressions: Essays on Art and Experience’ (2021), as well as translations of several contemporary novels and poetry collections. He has twice been Translator in Residence at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge and in 2022 was shortlisted for the Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize for his rendition of Édith Azam’s ‘Bird me’.

Emné Nasereddine was born in France in 1990 and grew up in Lebanon where she studied French literature at the Saint Joseph University in Beirut. Her poetry explores her experiences of immigration, loss and mourning, the lives of Lebanese women, and the customs and traditions of southern Lebanon. The Dance of the Fig Tree is her first book and won the 2021 Émile Nelligan Prize. She lives in Montreal.

Published on 4 June 2026 by Moth Books, this is the second of Iris Wolff’s books to appear in English, and was shortlisted for the 2024 German Book Prize. It tells of the deep, almost lifelong friendship between Lev and Kato, who are in their late thirties when we first meet them. Their story is told in reverse, as Wolff takes us back through their lives to their childhood in a village in the north of Romania, gradually revealing what has made them the people they are today.

BUY THE BOOK: https://www.waterstones.com/book/clearing/iris-wolff/ruth-martin/9781917593045

‘A wonderful novel’ Die Zeit Book of the Month

‘A magnificently contemporary book’ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

‘Iris Wolff proves to be a superlative storyteller.’ The Times Literary Supplement

Ruth Martin has been translating fiction and nonfiction books since 2010, by authors ranging from Joseph Roth to Angela Merkel. Together with Charlotte Collins and Nino Haratischwili, she won the 2020 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, for Nino’s epic novel The Eighth Life. Her translation of Shida Bazyar’s The Nights are Quiet in Tehran was shortlisted for the 2026 International Booker Prize.

Iris Wolff, born behind the iron curtain in the medieval town of Sibiu, Transylvania in 1977, is a writer whose work carries the reader deep into her former homeland. The fate of those who stay and those who choose to migrate is the constant and powerful theme weaving through her novels. She has won numerous awards for her writing, including the 2025 Uwe-Johnson Prize for outstanding literary works, last awarded to Jenny Erpenbeck in 2022 for her novel, Kairos.

One of a great many poems which will be in my book from Arc Publications. Brecht wrote about 3,000 poems, but priority always went to his plays.

Translator bio
Timothy Adès, rhyming translator-poet with eleven books from French, Spanish, German and four awards, also rewrote Shakespeare's 154 Sonnets without using letter E. He runs a bookstall of translated poetry, his own works and many others. He is a trustee of Agenda magazine, and is on Facebook and YouTube.


Author bio
Bertolt Brecht 1898-1956, the great playwright, was also a very great poet. Son of a pastor, an exile from Nazism in Scandinavia, he crossed Russia, reached Hollywood and eventually returned to East Berlin, running the Berliner Ensemble.


Forthcoming poetry book from Arc Publications: https://www.arcpublications.co.uk/writers/timothy-ades

A part of the series 'Reading the City', the anthology Book of Bratislava: A City in Short Fiction, co-edited by Radoslav Passia and Julia Sherwood, features ten stories by ten different authors set in the Slovak capital in the period from the end of World War II to the present day, translated by ten different translators. The stories i reflect the Slovak capital’s many changing incarnations: from a hopeful city newly liberated from the Nazis; to an outpost of communist Czechoslovakia crawling with informants; to the capital of a new, democratic independent state. Bratislava may be a city still shaping its identity, but it is one where creativity blooms, despite – or perhaps because of – its complex and intricate history. From the dive bars of the infamous Petržalka estate, to the lush tree-lined banks of the Danube, the past and present are in continual conversation with each other, striving to recapture what’s lost, while adjusting to the fast pace of change.

"We are presented with a tapestry of the city no less intricate or impressive than the ones on display in Bratislava’s Primacial Palace" - Sophie Benbelaid, Asymptote blog

"These 10 stories immerse the reader into Bratislava’s everyday and would really serve any traveller to the city well, before, during or after a trip." - Tripfiction.com

'This anthology’s translators are among the best in the game... Comma Press’s criteria result in a volume that... captures the various facets and critical essence of Slovakia’s capital.' - Asymptote Journal

Four of the anthology's translators read from their translations of works by Ján Rozner, Lucia Piussi, Alta Vášová and Richard Pupala.

John Minahane was born in Ireland and has lived and worked in Slovakia since 1996, working as an English language teacher while pursuing his own literary and translation projects

Janet Livingstone is a translator and life coach who spent 16 years living in Slovakia and is now based in Seattle, where she leads her own leadership and learning consultancy

Magdalena Mullek is a literary translator and scholar. She holds a PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures from Indiana University and is currently based in Slovakia

Jonathan Gresty is a freelance teacher, translator, and novelist who has been living in Slovakia since 1992


BUY THE ANTHOLOGY: https://commapress.co.uk/books/the-book-of-bratislava

Serge Joncour's panorama of rural life in late 20thC France won the Prix Femina in 2020 and was shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award in an English translation by Louise Rogers Lalaurie. It's set at Les Bertranges, a family farm deep in the south-west. Opening with the long hot summer of 1976, and closing with the cataclysmic storm of December 31 1999, the novel takes an affectionate look back at the period - Mitterand's presidential campaign, the eco-protests on the Larzac plateau, Chernobyl - with climate alarm bells ringing in the background. Alexandre is set to inherit the family farm, a yoke he assumes unquestioningly. The route of a new motorway poses an existential threat, but his love for a German student from behind the Wall, and the attentions of her eco-terrorist friends may prove his biggest challenge yet.

BUY THE BOOK: https://guardianbookshop.com/human-nature-9781913547196/

"An outstanding, big, compassionate novel... BY telling the stoery of days gone by, Joncour makes us reflect on those yet to come." Le Figaro.

Translator bio
Louise Rogers Lalaurie is a writer and translator from French, with a focus on art, fiction, and travel.

Author bio
Serge Joncour (b. 1961) is the author of 18 acclaimed novels, including three titles translated into English: Human Nature (2022), Wild Dog (2020) and Lean On Me (2022).

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This is one in a series of readings from The Song of Stork and Dromedary by Anjet Daanje. Check out the whole series at:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvwToi1IG7tIbyOABfbjnvA

Inspired by the life and work of Emily Brontë, this masterful, multi-award-winning book — acclaimed as the best Dutch novel published this century — pulls readers into a narrative that redefines time itself.

In the early 1800s, in Yorkshire, Eliza May Drayden and her sisters live far from the public eye, devoted to their shared love of reading and writing books. When, after dozens of rejections, Eliza May’s only novel, Haeger Mass, is finally published, it’s labelled as ‘ghastly’ and ‘immoral’. Over time, however, it is embraced by generations of readers as a masterpiece, and tales about its mysterious, reclusive author take on a life of their own.

In eleven extraordinary chapters, the story of Eliza May — both before and after her death — unfolds: through the tales of people who met her; her sister’s letters; her biographers’ words; the pages of a mysterious notebook; and the lives that become intertwined with hers, even centuries later.

In The Song of Stork and Dromedary, Anjet Daanje has crafted an absorbing literary mystery and an unforgettable meditation on love, life, loss, and the inexplicable nature of time. As the Brontës themselves did, Daanje shows us that storytelling is our only way to transcend death.


"Daanje works a deep literary vein that’s full of sly allusions . . . And there are sublime moments throughout, even when death comes into play . . . A challenging book that rewards its readers with great depth and beauty." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"A significant and moving literary achievement, an unforgettable story of a historical mystery. . . McKay renders Daanje's distinct, rhythmic prose and character tones adroitly, alongside the atmospheric dread and luminous beauty that epitomizes her writing." —Elizabeth DeNoma, Shelf Awareness

Translator bio
David McKay is an award-winning translator of Dutch fiction, nonfiction, plays, and poetry. Born and educated in the United States, he has lived in and around The Hague since 1997.

Author bio
Anjet Daanje writes novels, short stories, and screenplays. Her breakthrough novel, The Remembered Soldier, won the Netherlands’ 2020 F. Bordewijk Prize and the Best Book of Groningen Prize. The Song of Stork and Dromedary won the 2023 Libris Literature Prize, the most prestigious award for Dutch literature, and the Boekenbon Prize, the Netherlands’ other major literary award — the first time that the Libris and Boekenbon prizes have been won by the same book. It has since been licensed in 13 languages and has sold over 100,000 copies in the Netherlands. Scribe has licensed North American rights in its edition to Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Buy the book:
https://scribepublications.com.au/books/the-song-of-stork-and-dromedary
https://scribepublications.co.uk/books/the-song-of-stork-and-dromedary
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374620615/thesongofstorkanddromedary/

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Tania is a young Bengali living in Calcutta in the 1980s. Hated by her mother and shunned by her peers, she seeks solace within the pages of Russian books she reads in her mother tongue, Bengali. In a bookshop, she stumbles upon a Russian book published in the USSR in the 1920s by Raduga, a once-prestigious publishing house that was closed in 1930 on Lenin’s orders. Intrigued by the mysterious publisher behind the book, Tania perseveres through numerous frustrating detours until she finally tracks down Adel, the publisher's octogenarian daughter residing in a St. Petersburg nursing home, and corresponds with her. Through this connection, she ultimately uncovers the tumultuous destiny of Raduga’s founder, a Jewish journalist named Lev Moisevitch Kliatchko, who narrowly escaped execution under Stalin thanks to the intervention of Maxim Gorky and who died in 1933 from tuberculosis, shortly before the Moscow Trials.

BUY THE BOOK: https://www.hoperoadpublishing.com/books/russian-testament

'Shumona Sinha’s singular voice takes us into the nauseating world of bureaucracy, without heroes or pure-hearted victims. She does not condemn anyone, or perhaps she condemns everyone. Welcome to the real world.’ – Grazia, for Down with the Poor! ‘Indian poet Shumona Sinha has transformed Baudelaire’s poetic provocation into a strange and blazing reflection on violence.’ – Marianne, for Down with the Poor! ‘A seasoned novelist, Shumona Sinha travels between past and present, public unrest and private histories.’ – L’ Express, for Calcutta

About the translator:

Subhashree Beeman is a US-based literary translator. Winner of the 2024 PEN/Heim Translation Grant for the translation of an excerpt from Le Testament Russe by Shumona Sinha and 2024 SALT/ALTA Emerging Literary Translation Mentorship for Saigon Puducherry by Nagarathinam Krishna, she is currently translating Bain de Lune by Yanick Lahens into Tamil. She was the 2026 Laureate of Villa Swagatam, a 2-month French literary translation residency granted by the French Institute of India to translate Maylis de Kerangal's novel into Tamil. Her works have been supported by French Institute of India, Bangalore Science Gallery, Words Without Borders, The White Review, USAWA literary magazine, Weavers Literary Review, oneating.in, Kalachuvadu Magazine, etc.

About the author:

Shumona Sinha is the author of novels and anthologies of French and Bengali poetry, including Assommons les pauvres, Prix Eugène Dabit du roman populiste, Prix Valéry-Larbaud, Internationaler Literaturpreis in Berlin, adapted into plays in Germany and Austria, and Calcutta, Prix du rayonnement de la langue française de l’Académie Française, Grand Prix du Roman de la SGDL. Shumona Sinha’s books have also been the subject of various academic studies in France, Germany, and the United States.

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Distant Signs: A Novel
by Anne Richter, translated by Douglas Irving, published in 2019 by Neem Tree Press.

Distant Signs is an intimate portrait of two families spanning three generations amidst turbulent political change, behind and beyond the Berlin Wall.

In 1960s East Germany, Margret, a professor’s daughter from the city, meets and marries Hans, from a small village in the Thuringian forest. The couple struggle to contend with their different backgrounds, and the emotional scars they bear from childhood in the aftermath of war. As East German history gradually unravels, with collision of the personal and political, acutely observed vignettes quietly reveal their two families’ hidden truths.

“I don't know that I've read a more moving piece of post-war German fiction - and this includes Günther Grass's best efforts.”

Misha, US Online Blog Tour Reviewer

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From the publisher (World Literature Today): “In this story of lengthy quarantine due to an unnamed virus, a woman sneaks into the mountain to collect ferns—many ferns. Simultaneously evoking life under past Chilean political oppression and living under recent worldwide quarantines due to Covid-19, this Cortazarian story marks the author’s English-language debut.”
Catalina Infante Beovic is a Chilean writer, publisher, journalist, and teacher. Follow Catalina on Instagram at @catalinainfantebeovic
Michelle Mirabella is a Spanish to English translator studying at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey. Follow Michelle on Instagram at @mirabella_michelle and Twitter at @MirabellaM_

Find the story at:
English translation, published by World Literature Today in 2020: https://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/blog/fiction/ferns-catalina-infante-beovic
Spanish, published by Neón Ediciones: https://www.librospatagonia.com/library/publication/helechos

Follow World Literature Today on Twitter at @worldlittoday.

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It’s 2007 and we are in Bilbao, worn out by the final blows of Basque terrorism. Gorane and Jokin are twenty-five year old twins and children of ETA militants. Raised without rules, they take opposing and complementary directions: compliant and passive to everything, Jokin, a heroin-addict drummer, seems to follow in his parents’ footsteps, while Gorane, ambiguous and introverted, pulls away seeking refuge in an abstract world. When Jokin runs away and their parents become involved in a tragic event, Gorane finds herself prey to strange hallucinations of her parents. Meanwhile in Paris, Jokin struggles with his attraction to the mysterious Germana, yet, despite the distance, the twins’ lives seem destined to never separate and it will be a French writer’s novel that reconnects them.

The Melee is a polyphonic work; a world that connects reality to our most recondite dreams, a world where the only driving force seems to be blind violence. Can freedom reveal itself to be an instrument of torture, and can empathy that resists absolutism prevail in the face of trauma? Valentina Maini responds in the pages of this provocative debut and its web of stories connecting drug dealers, smugglers, psychiatrists, writers, cleaners and fortune tellers - and she does it with the conviction of Roberto Bolaño and Mathias Énard: looking chaos directly in the eye.

THE MELEE BY VALENTINA MAINI (PUBLISHED IN ITALIAN BY BOLLATI BORINGHIERI, 2020)

FIRST PLACE IN THE L'INDISCRETO QUALITY RANKINGS

SHORTLISTED FOR THE SEVERINO CESARI DEBUT AWARD 2020

SHORTLISTED FOR THE FONDAZIONE MONDADORI DEBUT AWARD 2020

CHOSEN BY KOBO IN THEIR 50 BOOKS TO DEFY AND SURVIVE THE YEAR 2020

“What is great European literature today? The Melee by Valentina Maini has the range and complexity to fit the bill and the ambition to be part of it.”
VERONICA RAIMO (The Girl at the Door)

“There are writers who, more than make their debut, burst onto the scene. By writing novels that play havoc with all the rules. Valentina Maini is one of them.”
ANDREA BAJANI (If You Kept a Record of Sins; Every Promise)

“Redolent of Clarice Lispector and Roberto Bolano, a haunted, captivating, poetic novel that tells the story of two children of ETA and their quest for life and the future under the tight rein of a true artist and her unique, visionary freedom of language.”
MARTA BARONE (Città sommersa)

“In The Melee, Valentina Maini unfurls a notable variety of textual typologies – reports, statements, recordings, a novel within the novel – showing that it is still possible to tell stories in an impressive, original manner.”
WU MING 2 (Q; Manituana; 54)


Valentina Maini was born in Bologna in 1987. She completed her PhD in Comparative Literature between Bologna and Paris and has published short stories in retabloid, TerraNullius, Atti Impuri, Horizonte, and other magazines. Some of her articles have appeared in Poetiche, La Deleuziana, and Classiques Garnier. With her collection of poetry, Casa Rotta (2016), she won the Anna Osti literary prize. She translates from French and from English into Italian.

Sean McDonagh is an emerging literary translator who translates from Italian. He is based in London where he works in publishing, and has been pursuing literary translation projects since participating in the Warwick Translates Summer School 2019. He has had a translation published on Asymptote, and as a poet has also had work published on Allegro, Rockland and Foxtrot Uniform. Sean has a BA in English, has lived and studied in Turin, and has completed an advanced course at the Italian Cultural Institute.

@seanpjamcdonagh (Twitter)
seanmcdonaghtranslator.com

For rights info, contact: Flavia Abbinante - flavia.abbinante@bollatiboringhieri.it
Rights Sold: Portuguese

The translator has obtained permission from the original rights holder to translate this sample and share a recording of it on Translators Aloud.
TO READ A LONGER EXTRACT, please visit: seanmcdonaghtranslator.com/projects-seeking-a-publisher

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