Alejandra Banca
FROM SAVAGERY and THE NIGHTS THAT WEREN’T
Translated by Katie Brown

Alejandra studied literature at Andrés Bello University in Caracas. Fleeing Venezuela’s collapse, in Spain she has worked in cold-call sales and teaching English. Her poetry has appeared in various anthologies. FROM SAVAGERY (Selkies House, May 2024) is her first collection of stories and follows the intersecting lives of the new underclass of overqualified young Venezuelan refugees hustling to survive on the streets of Barcelona. Selkies House publishes Alejandra’s first novel in 2025 and is committed to working with her independent Venezuelan publisher-in-exile in Madrid, Lecturas de Arraigo, which is dedicated to preserving the country’s literary culture after the publishing industry in Caracas imploded. She lives in Barcelona.

Katie Brown
Translator

Katie is an associated professor in Modern Languages at Exeter University. An expert on contemporary Latin American culture, she has appeared on BBC Radio 4’s “Open Book” and is part of the women’s U.K., U.S., and Venezuelan translation collective, Colaboratorio Ávila. Her translations appear regularly in the quarterly journal, Latin American Literature Today. Her translation of From Savagery by Alejandra Banca is the winner of an English PEN Award and was shortlisted for the Premio Valle-Inclan.

Damir Karakaš
CELEBRATION and BLUE MOON

Translated by Ellen Elias-Bursać

Damir is an award-winning Croatian author and former journalist. He studied law and agronomy in Zagreb. The 2021 winner of the prestigious Meša Selimović Award for best novel which is awarded to writers throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro, his fiction has been made into films and plays, and has been translated into Czech, French, German, Italian, Macedonia and Slovenian. His work will appear in English for the first time with Selkies House’ publication of his short fiction, CELEBRATION, and his novel, BLUE MOON. He lives in Zagreb.

Ellen Elias-Bursać
Translator

Ellen’s many award-winning translations from the Croatian, Bosnian and Serbian include works by Daša Drndić and Dubravka Ugrešić. She is a former language preceptor in the Slavic Department at Harvard and has served as the President of the American Literary Translators’ Association. In 2005 she was asked to join the English translation unit at the International Criminal Court for the former Yugoslavia in the Hague. She is a contributing editor at Asymptote. Her translation of Celebration by Damir Karakas was shortlisted for the EBRD Literature Prize and her translation of Blue Moon won an English PEN Award. She lives in Cambridge, Massachussetts, USA.

Antoine Wauters

THE MUSEUM OF CONTRADICTIONS and MAHMOUD OR THE RISING OF THE WATERS

Translated by Stephanie Smee

Antoine Wauters is a Belgian poet and novelist, winner of numerous literary awards including the Prix Goncourt de la nouvelle. The Museum of Contradictions, published by Selkies House in 2025, is his first book to be translated into English. His novel in verse, Mahmoud or the Rising of the Waters, won the Prix du Livre Inter, the Prix Wepler, and the Prix Marguerite Duras.

Stephanie Smee

Translator

Stephanie Smee’s translations of contemporary classics have won critical praise and multiple awards. She is the winner of the Australian Academy of the Humanities Medal of Excellence in Translation for Joseph Ponthus’ novel in verse, On the Line, Notes from a Factory.

Bothayna Al-Essa
THE GUARDIAN OF SURFACES

Translated by Ranya Abdelrahman and Sawad Hussain

Bothayna Al-Essa is the award-winning bestselling author of more than ten novels and several children’s books. In 2023 she was the British Centre for Translation’s Writer-in-Residence. In Kuwait, she is the founder of Takween, a bookshop and publishing house of critically acclaimed works. The Guardian of Surfaces is her second book to appear in English.

Sawad Hussain
Translator

Sawad Hussain is a PEN Award-winning translator. Her work has been shortlisted for The Warwick Prize for Women in Translation and for the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize. She is a judge for the Palestine Book Awards. She lives near Cambridge, UK.

Ranya Abdelrahman
Translator

Ranya Abdelrahman’s translation of Out of Time by iconic Palestinian author Samira Azzam was shortlisted for the Palestine Book Award. Her translations from Arabic appear in “ArabLit Quarterly” and “The Common”. Her translation with Sawad Hussain of The Guardian of Surfaces was shortlisted for the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize. She lives in Dubai.

Tove Jansson

NA MOOMINS AGUS AN TUIL MHÒR and MOOMINTROLL TEAGHLAICH FHINN

Translated by Mòrag Anna NicNèill

Tove Jansson is the world’s bestselling author and illustrator of the Moomin series of children’s books. Born in Finland in 1914, her family came from the country’s Swedish speaking minority. In 1966, she was awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Medal for her body of work. Jansson had a studio in Helsinki, but spent most of her time at her home on the small island of Klovharun, which featured in her novel for adults, The Summer Isle. Na Moomins agus an Tuil Mhòr is the first publication in Scottish Gaelic of any of her works.

Mòrag Anna NicNèill

Translator

Mòrag Anna NicNèill’s award-winning translations of children’s novels include Anna Ruadh (Anne of Greene Gables), which was shortlisted for Leabhar as Fhearr do Chloinn/Oigridh, Na Duaisean Litreachais (Best Book for Children/ Young People, The Gaelic Literature Awards) in 2021. For 26 years she taught Gaelic before winning a New Writers Award from the Scottish Book Trust and the Gaelic Books Council.

Praveen Herat
BETWEEN THIS WORLD AND THE NEXT

Praveen is the 2022 winner in the U.S. of the Restless Books Award for New Immigrant Writing. Born in London to Sri Lankan parents, he graduated from Cambridge and holds an M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. For three years he lived in Phnom Penh where the idea for his literary thriller crystalised, and he currently lives in Paris. BETWEEN THIS WORLD AND THE NEXT is his first novel.

Marina Mariasch

PERSONAL EFFECTS

Marina Mariasch is an Argentinian civil rights activist and professor of Latin American Poetry and Creative Writing. She has published poetry, stories, various volumes of essays, and three novels, including Efectos personales (Personal Effects). Mariasch has hosted radio and television programs on literature and has collaborated with publications such as Rolling Stone, Clarín, Página12, and LatFem. She is also part of Argentina’s #NiUnaMenos feminist movement, which led the fight for the decriminalisation of abortion. Personal Effects is her first work to be translated into English. She lives in Buenos Aires.

Xenophon
OECONOMICUS

Xenophon is considered one of the great writers of antiquity. A Greek philosopher, historian and military leader, he was also a student of Socrates, and his powers of persuasion travelled to influence Cicero in Ancient Rome.

Cato the Elder
DE AGRI CULTURA

Marcus Porcius, known as Cato the Elder was a first-century B.C. Roman soldier, senator and historian. City-born he was devoted to agriculture from a young age. Between military campaigns he lived on his farm, where he worked humbly as a labourer and active community participant, often asked to serve as an arbitrator of disputes.