Biography
"Trained: LAMDA. Theatre includes the bilingual plays: “Leaves” directed by Simon Evans and “Dinner with the Smiths” directed by Marianne Badrichani. Most recently David has played the lead role in “Consent” at the Harold Pinter and in Arthur Miller’s “An Enemy of the People” at the Union. David is delighted to be a part of the Beyond Words Festival again."
Natasha Lehrer is an award-winning journalist and literary critic. Her writing has appeared in The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement, The Nation, Fantastic Man and The Observer, and in various anthologies. Since 2014 she has translated over two dozen works of fiction and non-fiction from French to English. Her co-translation with Cécile Menon of Suite for Barbara Loden by Nathalie Léger was awarded the 2016 Scott Moncrieff Prize.
| The White Dress, translated by Natasha Lehrer (Les Fugitives, 2020) |
Brian Dillon was born in Dublin in 1969. His books include Essayism (Fitzcarraldo), The Great Explosion (Penguin Books, shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize), Objects in This Mirror: Essays, I Am Sitting in a Room, Sanctuary, Tormented Hope: Nine Hypochondriac Lives (Penguin Books, shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize) and In the Dark Room, which won the Irish Book Award for non-fiction. His writing has appeared in the Guardian, New York Times, London Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, Bookforum, frieze and Artforum. He is UK editor of Cabinet magazine, and teaches at the Royal College of Art, London.
| Essayism (Fitzcarraldo) |
London-based, Sarah Ardizzone is a translator from French to English. She has won the Marsh Award twice (in 2005 and 2009), as well as the Scott-Moncrieff Prize and a New York Times notable book accolade. She takes part in programmes promoting a creative approach to translation, including Translation Nation, Translators in Schools, The Spectacular Translation Machine and The Big Translate. She is the deputy chair of English PEN’s writers in translation committee, and a judge for Book Trust’s In Other Words initiative, she is also a patron of Outside In World.
Paul Gravett is a writer, critic, curator, publisher and broadcaster who has been working in the comics industry since 1981. He is the author of many books about comics, including Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics, Graphic Novels: Stories to Change Your Life and Comics Art, and was general editor of Comics You Must Read Before You Die. He is co-director of Comica, the London International Comics Festival.
| Posy Simmonds (Thames & Hudson, 2019). |
Roland Glasser translates literary and genre fiction from French, as well as art, travel and assorted nonfiction. His translation of Fiston Mwanza Mujila’s Tram 83 won the Etisalat Prize for Literature 2016 and was longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize and the Best Translated Book Award. He is a French Voices and PEN Translates Award winner, serves on the committee of the UK Translators Association, and is a co-founder of The Starling Bureau—a translators’ collective.
| Adeline Dieudonné, Real Life, translated by Roland Glasser, (World Editions, 2020). | |
| Tram 83, translated by Roland Glasser (Jacaranda, 2015) |
Alain Mabanckou was born in 1966 in the Congo. He currently lives in LA, where he teaches literature at UCLA. He is the author of six volumes of poetry and six novels. He is the winner of the Grand Prix de la Littérature 2012, and has received the Subsaharan African Literature Prize and the Prix Renaudot. He was selected by the French journal Lire as one of the fifty writers to watch out for this coming century. His previous books include African Psycho, Broken Glass, Memoirs of a Porcupine and Black Bazaar. In 2015 he was listed as a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize.
| The Death of the Comrade President, translated by Helen Stevenson (Serpent’s Tail, 2020) |
Roland Barthes was born in 1915 and studied French literature and classics at the University of Paris. After teaching French at universities in Romania and Egypt, he joined the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique, where he devoted himself to research in sociology and lexicology. He was a professor at the College de France until his death in 1980.
| Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes (Vintage Publishing, 2020) |
© Philippe Matsas
Born in 1981 in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Fiston Mwanza Mujila is a poet, novelist and playwright. Tram 83 (Jacaranda Books), his first novel, longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize and the Prix du Monde and was awarded the Etisalat Prize for Literature and the Internationaler Literaturpreis from Der Haus der Kulturen der Welt. He lives and teaches in Graz, Austria.
| Tram 83, translated by Roland Glasser (Jacaranda Books, 2015) |
© Thibaut de Corday
Born in Rwanda in 1956, Scholastique Mukasonga settled in France in 1992, only two years before the brutal genocide of the Tutsi swept through Rwanda. Gallimard published her autobiographical account Inyenzi ou les Cafards, which marked Mukasonga's entry into literature. This was followed by the publication of La femme aux pieds nus in 2008 and L’Iguifou in 2010, both widely praised. Her first novel, Notre-Dame du Nil, won the Ahmadou Kourouma prize and the Renaudot prize in 2012, as well as the 2013 Océans France Ô prize, and the 2014 French Voices Award, and was shortlisted for the 2016 International Dublin Literary award.
| Our Lady of the Nile, translated by Melanie Mauthner (Archipelago Books, 2014) |
