Selva Almada

Compared to Carson McCullers, William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, Sara Gallardo and Juan Carlos Onetti, Selva Almada (Entre Ríos, Argentina, 1973) is considered one of the most powerful voices of contemporary Argentinian and Latin American literature and one of the most influential feminist intellectuals of the region. Including her début The Wind that Lays Waste, she has published three novels, a book of short stories, a book of journalistic fiction (Dead Girls) and a kind of film diary (written in the set of Lucrecia Martel’s most recent film Zama, based on Antonio di Benedetto’s novel). She has been finalist of the Rodolfo Walsh Award and of the Tigre Juan Award (both in Spain). Her work has been translated into French, Italian, Portuguese, German, Dutch, Swedish and Turkish. Her most recent novel, No es un río (This is not a River) has just been published in Argentina (2020). Brickmakers is her third book to appear in English and is being published in collaboration with Graywolf Press, US.

Annie McDermott translates fiction and poetry from Spanish and Portuguese. Her work has appeared in publications including Granta, World Literature Today, Two Lines, Asymptote and Alba, and her co-translation of City of Ulysses by Teolinda Gersão (with Jethro Soutar) will be published in 2017 by Dalkey Archive Press.  In 2013, she was the runner-up in the Harvill Secker Young Translators’ Prize, and in 2014 she took part in a six-month mentorship with the translator Margaret Jull Costa, during which she worked on texts by Brazilian writers such as Mário de Andrade, Graciliano Ramos and Marcelino Freire.

She has previously lived in Mexico City and São Paulo, Brazil. She has also spent time in Tbilisi, Georgia, studying Georgian, and in Montevideo, Uruguay.

Annie also has various years of experience as an editor, and has worked as the main editor for the 2017 Charco Press catalogue.