Julia Sanches and Claudia Hernandez

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC | Translator Julia Sanches with Salvadoran novelist/short story writer Claudia Hernandez.

Julia Sanches has translated more than a dozen books from Spanish, Portuguese, and Catalan into English. Her translations and writing have appeared in Granta, LitHub, The Paris Review Daily, and The Common, among others. She has received support for her work from the PEN Heim grant, PEN Translates, and the New York State Council of the Arts, and is the 2021 winner of the PEN Translation Award for her translation of Migratory Birds by Mariana Oliver. Born in Brazil, Julia now lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

Claudia Hernández is the highly acclaimed author of five short story collections. Her work has appeared in various anthologies in Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Israel and the USA. She was the winner of the Anna Seghers Foundation award (2004), which acknowledges authors interested in making a more just and more humane society through their artistic production. The National Endowment for the Arts has supported the English translation of some of her books that explore the brutal impact of the El Salvadorian Civil War. Hernández won the prestigious Juan Rulfo Prize in 1998 and was one of Hay’s Bogota 39 authors in 2007. She currently teaches at the Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas (UCA) in El Salvador.