Translators & Partners
Christopher Bartholomew
Christopher Bartholomew was introduced to Romanian while engaged in extended gap year mission work in Romania from 1998 – 2000. He continued Romanian studies during a B.A. in English from Brigham Young University and an MBA at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, Utah. He stumbled across the early novels of Mircea Eliade in a used bookstore in Bucharest’s University metro station in 2004, during a summer researching the author’s early periodical writings and alleged connections to the ultra-right Legion of the Archangel Mihail. Chris felt that he had discovered a fresh voice, with the power to initiate readers into the complexities of interwar Romania. He has collaborated with Istros on translations of Eliade’s first two novels including, most recently, Gaudeaumus.
Alistair Ian Blyth
Alistair Ian Blyth is one of the most active translators working from Romanian to English today. A native of Sunderland, England, Blyth attended the universities of Cambridge and Durham, and has resided for many years in Bucharest. His many translations from Romanian include: Little Fingers by Filip Florian; Our Circus Presents by Lucian Dan Teodorovici; Occurrence in the Immediate Unreality by Max Blecher; and Coming from an Off-Key Time by Bogdan Suceavă. Life Begins on Friday by Ioana Parvulescu is Aistair’s first book for Istros.
Dr Noah Charney
Dr Noah Charney is a professor of art history at American University of Rome and University of Ljubljana. He is also an award-winning writer for numerous publications, including The Guardian, The Atlantic, Salon, The Times and Esquire. He is the best-selling author of many books, including The Art Thief and The Art of Forgery. He lives in Slovenia, where he collaborates with local authors and publishers on books such as this one. Yugoslavia, My Fatherland by Goran Vojnović is his first translation for Istros.
Alexandra Coliban
Alexandra Coliban is a translator from and to Romanian-English. She was bought up as a bilingual speaker of English and Romanian, by her family in Bucharest. Her grandfather was Professor Dan Dutescu, the respected Romanian translator of Shakespeare and Chaucer. Alexandra has followed in his footsteps, and is the Romanian translator of Jeffrey Euginides ‘Middlesex’ as well as Sylvia Plath’s ‘The Bell Jar’ and ‘Sinul’ by Philip Roth She also translated into English the stories in the collection ‘Love 13 – a bilingual selection of love stories’ (Editura Arte, 2010). Cecilia Stefanescu’s Sun Alley translated by Alexandra and published by Istros Books.
Dr. John K. Cox
Dr. John K. Cox is a professor of history and department head at North Dakota State University in Fargo. His translations include long and short literary works by Danilo Kiš, Ajla Terzić, Ivan Cankar, Vjenceslav Novak, Ivan Ivanji, Ivo Andrić, Meša Selimović, Ismail Kadare, and Miklós Radnóti, and short nonfiction by Joseph Roth, Stefan Heym, and Erwin Koch. Cox’s historical works include the books The History of Serbia and Slovenia: Evolving Loyalties. He is currently translating the Holocaust memoir of Simon Kemény. John has translated Muharem Bazdulj’s Byron and the Beauty from the Bosnian and Biljana Jovanović’s Dogs & Others from Serbian for Istros Books.
Kenneth Dakan
Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, Kenneth Dakan lives in Istanbul, where his focus is on literary translation from Turkish to English. Among the works of fiction and nonfiction he has translated are Perihan Magden’s Escape, Ayse Kulin’s Farewell: A Mansion in Occupied Istanbul and Love in Exile, Ece Temelkuran’s Deep Mountain, Birgül Oğuz’s Hah! (co-translation), Murat Somer’s Hop-Çiki-Yaya murder mystery series and Buket Uzuner’s I am Istanbul
Will Firth
Will Firth is one of the leading translators from Russian, Serbo-Croat and Macedonian into English. A native of Australia, he has lived for short periods in the UK and Croatia, and now resides in Berlin, Germany. He is accredited as a translator from Croatian, Macedonian and Russian into English with NAATI (the National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters, Australia). He has translated from Serbo-Croat to English over a vast range of genres; from film and academic texts, to literature and humanities. His list of translations for Istros include Spahic’s ‘Hansen’s Children’, The Olcinium Trilogy by Andrej Nikolaidis; Perisic’s ‘Our Man in Iraq’ and ‘Ekaterini’ by Marija Knežević; ‘The Great War’ by Aleksandar Gatalica nad ‘Quiet Flows the Una’ by Faruk Sehic.
Jozefina Komporaly
Jozefina Komporaly is a London-based academic and translator from Hungarian and Romanian. She is editor and co-translator of the collections How to Explain the History of Communism to Mental Patients and Other Plays (Seagull, 2015), András Visky’s Barrack Dramaturgy (Intellect, 2017) and Plays from Romania: Dramaturgies of Subversion (Bloomsbury, 2021), and author of numerous publications on translation, adaptation and theatre. Her translations appeared in Asymptote, The Baffler, Columbia Journal, Los Angeles Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, Poet Lore, Words without Borders, World Literature Today, and were produced by Foreign Affairs, Trap Door, Theatre Y, Trafika Europe. Recent publications include Mr K Released by Matéi Visniec (finalist for the 2021 EBRD Literature Prize), Story of a Stammer by Gábor Vida (Seagull Books, 2022), MyLifeandMyLife by Melinda Mátyus (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2023). Her translation of Home by Andrea Tompa (Istros Books, 2024) was the recipient of a PEN Translates Grant. Website: https://
Celia Hawkesworth
Celia Hawkesworth worked for many years as Senior Lecturer in Serbian and Croatian at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College, London. She has published numerous articles and several books on Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian literature, including the studies ‘Ivo Andric: Bridge between East and West’ (Athlone Press, 1984); ‘Voices in the Shadows: Women and Verbal Art in Serbia and Bosnia’ (CEU Press, 2000);and ‘Zagreb: A Cultural History’ (Oxford University Press, 2007). Among her many translations are two works by Dubravka Ugrešić, published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1998; ‘The Museum of Unconditional Surrender’, short-listed for the Weidenfeld Prize for Literary Translation, and ‘The Culture of Lies’, winner of the Heldt Prize for Translation in 1999. She has translated 4 titles for Istros: Fairground Magician, Odhohol & Cally Rascal, Death in the Museum of Modern Art, Farewell, Cowboy and Singer in the Night.
Rawley Grau
Rawley Grau, originally from Baltimore, has lived in Ljubljana since 2001. He has translated numerous works from Slovene, including the novels Dry Season, by Gabriela Babnik, and Panorama, by Dušan Šarotar, which was shortlisted for the 2017 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. From Russian he has translated the poetry and letters of Yevgeny Baratynsky, A Science Not from the Earth, was awarded the AATSEEL Prize for Best Scholarly Translation in 2016. His translation of Mojca Kumerdej’s novel, The Harvest of Chronos was released in November 2017, and her short-story collection Fragma. Raelwy is pressently working on a second novel by Dušan Šarotar: Billiards at the Hotel Dobray, due out in october 2019.
Olivia Hellewell
Olivia Hellewell is a literary translator from Slovene and a doctoral researcher at the University of Nottingham. She gained a Master’s degree in Translation Studies with Slovene in 2013 and during the same year was awarded the Rado L. Lenček prize by the Society for Slovene Studies for her essay on translating the poetry of Dane Zajc. Her current PhD research explores the socio-cultural functions of translated literature in Slovenia since 1991. Olivia has previously translated short stories, poems and literary extracts including the prize-winning Dry Season by Gabriela Babnik for the European Commission’s EU Prize for Literature. None Like Her by Jela Krečič marked her full-length literary translation debut, followed by Goran Vojnovic’s novel The Fig Tree,
Feyza Howell
Feyza Howell’s translation of literature and art books from Turkish includes Fiasco by Coşkun Büktel, Madam Atatürk by İpek Çalışlar, Unto the Tulip Gardens: My Shadow and Imperial Ottoman Jewellery by Gül İrepoğlu, Kurt Seyt & Shura by Nermin Bezmen, Forget Me Not by Aslı Eti, and Ottoman Miniatures and Forty Days and Forty Nights by Metin And, as well as subtitles for the award-winning Ice Cream, I Scream (2006). She has translated The Highly Unreliable Account of the History of a Madhouse by Ayfer Tunç (2020, long listed for the EBRD Prize) and Snapping Point by Aslı Biçen (2021) for Istros. Feyza lives in Berkshire, and swims, dances and plays tennis when not reading a book, translating, writing, drawing, or editing.
John Hodgson
John Hodgson was born in England in 1951 and studied English at Cambridge and Newcastle. He has taught at the universities of Prishtina and Tirana and is the translator of Ismail Kadare’s Three-Arched Bridge. He has written about Albania, Kosova, the British Balkan traveler Edith Durham, and the novelist John Cowper Powys. He now works as an Albanian-English translator and interpreter. His first book for Istros was The False Apocalypse by Fatos Lubonja. Listen to a podcast with John on his life and work with the Albanian language on ISTROSCONVERSATIONS. John is currently translating the short prison stories of Fatos Lubonja for Istros, publicaiton date to be announced.
David Limon
David Limon translates literature for children and adults from Slovene into English. His translations include the prize winning novels Fužinski bluz (Fužine Blues) by Andrej Skubic and Iqball hotel (Iqball Hotel) by Boris Kolar, as well as five novels by the internationally recognised author Evald Flisar, three of which were published by Istros Books. He has also translated short stories or other works by a range of writers including Fran Levstik, Ivan Cankar, Janez Trdina, Vitomil Zupan, Mirana Likar Bajželj, Tadej Golob, Lenart Zajc, Jani Virk, Nina Kokelj, Jana Bauer, Janja Vidmar and Desa Muck. He is Associate Professor at the Department of Translation at the University of Ljubljana.
Christopher Moncrieff
Christopher Moncrieff translates widely from French, German and Romanian literature. After military service in Europe, the Near East and the USA during the Cold War, he produced large-scale son et lumière shows in Germany, France and Los Angeles before beginning to write and translate. He read Theology at Oxford and has qualifications in design and on the military staff. A frequent traveller in Central and Eastern Europe, he speaks a number of the languages of the region. He also works for autism organizations and is a neurodiversity activist. Diary of a Short-Sighted Adolescent, the first novel of Mircea Eliade, is translated from the Romanian. See more at www.christophermoncrieff.com
Timothy Pogačar
Timothy Pogačar is a faculty member in the Department of World Languages and Cultures at Bowling Green SU, where he teaches Russian language, translation, and courses on post- socialist European societies. He edits (1995–) the journal Slovene Studies. Among his book- length (Slovene-English) translations are six novels by Evald Flisar and scholarly books by Marko Juvan (Intertextuality: History and Poetics, 2009) and Luka Vidmar (A Slavic Republic of Letters: The Correspondence between Bartholomäus Kopitar and Sigismund Zois, 2015). He has recently translated Aleš Štegar’s 2018 and 2019 essays “Written on Site” and various sample translations for Slovene publishers.
Coral Petkovich
Coral Petkovich was born in Perth, to third generation Australians of English/Scottish heritage. She was educated at Perth Modern School and the University of Western Australia. She has had several short stories published to date, and her novel, Ivan – From the Adriatic to the Pacific, is a family saga based on her husband’s true life story. Coral has worked as an interpreter for the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, and has translated two books from Croatian to English for Istros: Seven Terrors by Selvedin Avdic and Hair Everywhere by Tea Tulić
Christina Pribićević-Zorić
Christina Pribićević-Zorić has translated over 35 translated works of fiction and non-fiction from Serbian/Croatian and French into English, including: “The Dictionary of the Khazars” by Milorad Pavić, published by Alfred Knopf (on New York Times list of the ten best books of the year); “African Rhapsody, Short Stories of the Contemporary (Francophone) African Experience”, published by Anchor Books; Zlata’s Diary, by Zlata Filipović, published by Viking; Tales of Old Sarajevo by Isak Samokovlija, published by Vallentine Mitchell; Frida’s Bed by Slavenka Drakulić, published by Penguin; The Stranger Next Door, an Anthology from the Other Europe, published by Northwestern University Press. She has received several prizes for her work – the Serbian P.E.N. Award for Translation; the Djuro Daničić Award for Translation and the Award for Outstanding Achievement Award at Radio Yugoslavia. She is a member of the Board of Trustees at the Media Diversity Institute, London, English PEN and the Advisory Board of the Central & East European Book Project, Amsterdam. Chistina has translated Filip David’s The House of REmebering and Forgetting and Wild Woman by Marina Puhovski for Istros Books.
Mirza Purić
Mirza Purić is a literary translator working from German and BCMS. He is a contributing editor of EuropeNow and in-house translator for the Sarajevo Writers’ Workshop. From 2014 to 2017 he was an editor-at-large for Asymptote. He has published several book-length translations into BCMS, including Nathan Englander’s The Ministry of Special Cases, Michael Köhlmeier’s Idylle mit ertrinkendem Hund and Rabih Alameddine’s The Hakawati. His translations into English have appeared, or are due to appear, in Asymptote, H.O.W. (blog), EuropeNow, PEN America, AGNI, the Well Review and elsewhere. His co-translation, with Ellen Elias-Bursac, of Miljenko Jergovic’s story collection Inshallah, Madonna, Inshallah, will be released in 2018 by Archipelago Books. Istros Books published his translation of Faruk Šehić’s UNDER PRESSURE in May 2019.
Julia and Peter Sherwood
Julia and Peter Sherwood are based in London and work as freelance translators from and into a number of Central and East European languages. Julia Sherwood was born and grew up in Bratislava, Slovakia, and spent more than twenty years in the NGO sector in London before turning to freelance translation some ten years ago. She is Asymptote’s editor-at-large for Slovakia. Peter Sherwood’s first translations from the Hungarian appeared fifty years ago, but he was an academic for over forty years before retiring and devoting himself more or less full-time to translating. Their joint book-length translations into English include works by Balla, Daniela Kapitáňová, Uršuľa Kovalyk, Peter Krištúfek (from the Slovak), Hubert Klimko-Dobrzaniecki (Polish), and Petra Procházková (Czech). Peter’s translations from the Hungarian include works by Béla Hamvas, Noémi Szécsi, Antal Szerb, and Miklós Vámos. Together, theyhave transalted Pavel Villikovsky’s Fleeting Snow for Istros.