Authors & Translators

Born in Huambo in 1960, Agualusa is considered one of Africa’s most important writers. He studied in Lisbon and currently lives in Portugal, Angola and Mozambique. Both as a novelist and a reporter Agualusa has become an important voice of his country. He has a weekly column in the prestigious Brazilian newspaper O Globo. His novels The Book of Chameleons was awarded the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2007, and A General Theory of Oblivion was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize 2016 and was awarded the International Dublin Literary Award 2017. His books have been published in over 30 languages.

Writer, editor and translator (from Portuguese, Spanish and French) with about eighty books published to date. His translations from Portuguese include novels by José Eduardo Agualusa, Gonçalo M. Tavares, Carola Saavedra, Paulo Scott and Julián Fuks; children's books by Socorro Acioli and Roger Mello; as well as non-fiction, plays and (very occasionally, and under duress) poetry. His work has won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the International Dublin Literary Award and been shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, among others. He’s a former chair of the UK's Translators Association and one of the founding committee members of PELTA. Photo (c) John Lawrence

Emilio Fraia was born in Sao Paulo in 1982. He is the author of three books. His most recent novel, Sebastopol (Sevastopol, Alfaguara, 2018) was the winner of the Biblioteca Nacional Prize, finalist of the Oceanos Prize and Jabuti Prize. and published by New Directions in the US, Lolli Editions in the UK and Tranan in Sweden. It will be adapted for the big screen by Prodigo Films. He was one of Granta’s twenty Best Brazilian Young Writers in 2012. He has been awarded a Civitella Ranieri Writing Fellowship, a traditional residency program for international writers at the Civitella Ranieri Center in Italy in the 2022 season. He is currently an editor of contemporary fiction at Companhia das Letras.

Zoë Perry is a Canadian-American translator who has translated work by several contemporary Portuguese-language authors, including Emilio Fraia, Clara Drummond, Rodrigo de Souza Leão, Lourenço Mutarelli, and Carol Bensimon. Her translations have appeared in the New Yorker, Granta, Astra, n+1 and The Paris Review. Zoë was awarded a PEN/Heim grant for her translation of Veronica Stigger’s Opisanie Swiata and was selected for a residency at the Banff International Translation Centre for her translation of Emilio Fraia’s Sevastopol. She is a founding member of the Starling Bureau, a translators collective.

Dulce Maria Cardoso is a Portuguese writer, who spent her childhood in Luanda, Angola after her parents moved there when she was an infant. Her family returned to Portugal following the Angolan War of Independence in 1975. She studied law at the University of Lisbon and worked as a lawyer before becoming a full-time writer. Her first novel, 'Campo de Sangue', won the Grand Prize Acontece de Romance. 'Violeta among the Stars' won the EU Prize for Literature and 'O Chão dos Pardais' won the Portuguese Pen Club Award.

Ángel Gurría-Quintana is a historian, journalist and literary translator from Spanish and Portuguese. He writes regularly for the book pages of the Financial Times. His translations include 'Other Carnivals: Short Stories from Brazil' (Full Circle Editions, 2013) and 'The Return', by Dulce Maria Cardoso (Maclehose Press, 2016). 

Ondjaki is the most prominent African writer of Portuguese from the generations born after Portugal’s former colonies achieved independence in 1975. He has written poetry, children's books, short stories, novels, drama and film scripts. He was awarded the Jose Saramago Prize in 2013 for his novel 'Transparent City', which was also distinguished, in French translation, with the 2015 Prix Transfuge du Meilleur Roman Africain, as well as a Prix Littérature-Monde at the 2016 St. Malo literary festival.

Stephen Henighan is the English translator of 'Transparent City', as well as of two of Ondjaki’s earlier novels, 'Good Morning Comrades' and 'Grandma Nineteen and the Soviet's Secret'. He is General Editor of the Biblioasis International Translation Series and a Spanish-American literature professor at the University of Guelph. He wrote 'A Grave in the Air', 'The Streets of Winter' and other books of fiction.

Afonso is a writer and illustrator. Since 2008, the year he began writing, he has published more than thirty books, including novels, plays, works of non-fiction, essays and picture books. He’s a regular contributor to newspapers and magazines. His work has been translated into 20 languages. Prizes and awards: Prémio Literário Maria Rosa Colaço, Grande Prémio de Conto Camilo Castelo Branco, European Union Prize for Literature, Prémio Autores para Melhor Ficção Narrativa SPA, Prémio Fernando Namora, Prémio da Fundação Nacional do Livro Infantil e Juvenil do Brasil (FNLIJ), Grande Prémio de Literatura de Viagens Maria Ondina Braga / Associação Portuguesa de Escritores and Prémio Nacional de Ilustração.

Based in Cardiff, Wales, Rahul has translated fiction and non-fiction from Brazil and Portugal, including authors such as Patricia Portela, Lilia M. Schwarcz, Daniel Pellizzari, Daniel Galera, Ana Pessoa, José J. Veiga and more. He also works in translation outreach and education with the Stephen Spender Trust and the Translation Exchange at Queen's College, Oxford, and in 2018-2019 was Translator in Residence at the British Library. His debut full-length translation, 'Kokoschka's Doll' by Afonso Cruz, was published by Maclehose in 2021. He's currently working on 'Nothing Can Hurt You Now', by Simone Campos, to be published in early 2023 by Pushkin Vertigo. He's a founding committee member of PELTA.

Paulo Scott was born in 1966 in Porto Alegre, in southern Brazil, and grew up in a working-class neighbourhood. At university, Scott was an active member of the student political movement and was also involved in Brazil’s re-democratisation process.

For ten years he taught law at university in Porto Alegre. He has now published four books of fiction and four of poetry. He also translates from English. He moved to Rio de Janeiro in 2008 to focus on writing full-time.