UK Experts – Year 2015

Ángel Gurría-Quintana is a historian, journalist and literary translator from Spanish and Portuguese. Educated in Mexico City and Cambridge, he is a regular contributor to the books pages of the Financial Times, for which he reviews fiction in translation. His writing has also appeared in The Observer, The Guardian, The Economist, Prospect, Granta and The Paris Review. In 2014 he edited and translated Other Carnivals: New Stories from Brazil (Full Circle Editions). He is programme curator for FlipSide literary festival, and is an International Strategy Officer at the University of Cambridge.

Lorenza Garcia was born and brought up in England. She spent her early twenties living and working in Iceland and Spain. She graduated in 1998 from Goldsmith’s College with First Class Honours in Spanish and Latin American Studies, before moving to France for seven years. Since 2007, she has translated twenty novels and works of non-fiction from the French and Spanish, and has recently begun translating from the Icelandic. She lives in London.

Nick Caistor is a British translator from Spanish, Portuguese and French. After living for several years in Latin America, on his return to Britain he began to translate fiction by Latin American and Spanish authors. He has now translated some forty/ fifty works of fiction, and in 2006, 2008 and 2015 was awarded the Valle Inclán prize for translation from Spanish. He has been part of the New Spanish Books project since it started.

Simon Smith is senior editor and rights manager at Peter Owen, a long-established independent publisher known primarily for its literary-fiction list, much of it in translation, that includes such internationally acclaimed authors as Blaise Cendrars, Shusaku Endo, Anna Kavan, Hermann Hesse, Quim Monzó, Yukio Mishima, Arto Paasilinna, Cesare Pavese and Tarjei Vesaas. He has a particular interest in international fiction and has introduced authors from many countries to the Peter Owen list. He also works as a publishers’ freelance.

David Mantero was born in Malaga in 1978 and studied Philosophy, graduating in 2000. In 2001 he moved to London where he’s worked in bookselling for almost 15 years. Currently David is Head buyer at Stanfords. Stanfords is one of the world’s best known map and travel book specialists founded in 1853.