Sawad Hussain (Mentor: Arabic)
Sawad Hussain is a translator from Arabic whose work in 2023 was shortlisted for The Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, the Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, and longlisted for The Moore Prize for Human Rights Writing. She is a judge for the Palestine Book Awards and the Armory Square Prize for South Asian Literature in Translation. She has run translation workshops under the auspices of Shadow Heroes, Africa Writes, Shubbak Festival, the Yiddish Book Center, the British Library, and the National Centre for Writing. She is committed to mentoring literary translators.
(c) Sawad Hussain
Marita Thomsen (Mentor: Faroese)
A translator and interpreter who loves stories in all guises. Her published works from Faroese, Danish and Spanish include: the first Faroese queer poetry collection The Suntrap by Beinir Bergsson, the lyrical novel On the Other Side is March by Sólrún Michelsen, the play Castle of Joy by Búi Dam, which had a sell-out run at the Barbican, and award-winning children’s books by Bárður Oskarsson. Marita has contributed to Circumference Magazine, Asymptote Journal and anthologies published by Pushkin Press and Dedalus Books, her translation of Dead Men Dancing by Jógvan Isaksen received the 2024 Petrona Award. This autumn she is happily tinkering with an edited William Heinesen volume.
(c) Camila França Photography
Jonathan Reeder (Mentor: Dutch from Flanders)
Jonathan Reeder, a native of New York and longtime Amsterdam resident, enjoys a dual career as a literary translator and performing musician. After many years as an orchestral bassoonist, he now translates contemporary Dutch-language fiction and non-fiction as well as opera libretti and essays on classical music. A keen advocate for Flemish writing, he has worked closely with Belgian writers including Gaea Schoeters, Tülin Erkan, Maarten Inghels and Tom Lanoye. His most recent Flemish translation is of Crackling Skulls by Roger Van de Velde. He is currently working on the English translation of Lanoye’s classic youth memoir Cardboard Boxes.
(c) Michele Hutchison
Clare Richards (Mentor: Korean)
Clare Richards is an award-winning translator from Korean. A previous mentee of Anton Hur during the 2020-21 programme, she has since translated works by Kang Hwagil, Lim Solah, Yeon Somin and others. Clare has a particular interest in the intersection between disability and translation, and is passionate about making literary translation more accessible as a field. After stints in London and Seoul, she now lives in a little cottage in the Nottinghamshire countryside. @clarehannahmary
(c) Clare Richards
Kotryna Garanasvili (Mentor: Lithuanian)
Kotryna Garanasvili is a writer, translator and interpreter working with English, Lithuanian, French, German, Russian, and Georgian. She teaches literature and translation at Vilnius University and University of East Anglia, where she has received a PhD in literary translation and serves as a member of the BCLT Research Group. She is a previous winner of the Emerging Translator Mentorship at the National Centre for Writing and has been awarded traineeships at the EU Council and the European Parliament. More about her here.
(c) Sam Boyd
Rosie Hedger (Mentor: Norwegian)
Rosie Hedger was born in Scotland and completed her MA (Hons) in Scandinavian Studies at the University of Edinburgh, where she graduated with a distinction in Norwegian. Rosie spent a year at the University of Oslo, taking courses in Norwegian language and literature and researching for her dissertation on contemporary Norwegian fiction. Since completing her studies, Rosie has also lived in Sweden and Denmark, and is now based in the UK.
Rosie’s translation of Gine Cornelia Pedersen’s Zero was shortlisted for the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize 2019, and her translation of Agnes Ravatn’s The Bird Tribunal won an English PEN Translates Award in 2016. Ravatn’s novel was later selected for BBC Radio 4’s Book at Bedtime, broadcast in January 2017, and was shortlisted for the 2017 Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel of the Year.
Sean Gasper Bye (Mentor: Polish)
Sean Gasper Bye is a translator of Polish literature into English based in Philadelphia. His translations have won the EBRD Literary Prize and been shortlisted for the Sami Rohr Prize, a National Jewish Book Award, a National Translation Award and the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation. He is a former National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellow and a Translator-in-Residence at Princeton University. His latest work is Did This Hand Kill? by Cezary Łazarewicz, published in 2024 by Open Letter Books.
(c) Randl Bye
Mohini Gupta (Mentor: Languages of India)
Mohini Gupta is a writer and translator from New Delhi. She is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Aarhus University, Denmark, after completing a D.Phil. from the University of Oxford.
She has been a Charles Wallace India Trust Translator-Writer Fellow hosted by Literature Across Frontiers in Wales, and a Translator-in-Residence at the Sangam House International Writers’ Residency in Bangalore. Her writings and translations have been published by Routledge (UK), Honno Press (Wales), Speaking Tiger (India) and Tulika Books (India).
She is on the Board of Trustees at the National Library of Wales, and the Executive Committee of the Translators’ Association of India.
(c) Silas Mortensen
