A NEW Scottish publishing house being launched at the Edinburgh International Book Festival is aiming to bring the best of contemporary Latin American literature to audiences in Britain.
Edinburgh-based Charco Press will publish fiction by some of Latin America’s best-known authors in English for the first time.
Gabriela Cabezon Camara, pictured, pictured, and Ariana Harwicz are two of five initial authors to be featured by the company.
Both acclaimed figures in modern Argentinian literature, they will appear at the book festival today and on Saturday. Cabezon Camara will be one of three authors interviewed by Scotland’s Makar Jackie Kay, the country’s national poet.
Argentina-born Dr Carolina Orloff, one of the founders of Charco Press, said: “We are excited to introduce British readers to some outstanding Latin American voices, to date unavailable in English and thus overlooked in the UK.
“The entirely different political, social and cultural eyes through which these authors see the world offers us a unique, insightful and remarkable perspective.”
Charco is the Spanish word for puddle and the name was chosen to indicate the crossing of the water geographically and metaphorically in literary traditions.
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