Maria Gabriela Llansol (1931-2008) is a singular figure in Portuguese literature, one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, yet never before translated into English. Although entirely unknown in the United States, she twice won the award for best novel from the Portuguese Writers’ Association with her textually idiosyncratic, fragmentary, and densely poetic writing; other recipients of this prize include José Saramago and António Lobos Antunes. Upon her death in 2008, she left behind twenty-seven published books and more than seventy unpublished notebooks, all of which evade any traditional definitions of genre. Deep Vellum published her trilogy Geography of Rebels, in English translation by Audrey Young, in 2018.
Audrey Young is a translator, researcher, and archivist. She received a Fulbright grant to research non-theatrical film in Portugal and studied Portuguese language and culture at the University of Lisbon with a scholarship from the Instituto Camões. She has worked at the Getty Research Institute, the Cineteca Nacional México, and the Arquivo Nacional do Brasil, among other archives.
Gonçalo M. Tavares was born in Luanda in 1970 and teaches Theory of Science in Lisbon. His work has already received an impressive amount of literary awards, among them the Prix Littéraire Européen, the Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger 2010, which has so far been given to authors like Salman Rushdie, John Updike, and Philip Roth. Other awards inculde the Saramago Prize, the Prêmio Portugal Telecom de Literatura em Língua Portuguesa, the SPA Author's Prize, the Prêmio Melhor Narrativa Ficcional da Sociedade Portuguesa de Autores and the Prémio Literário Fundação Inês de Castro.