The Polish Boxer

Eduardo Halfon was born in Guatemala City, moved to the United States with his family at the age of ten, went to school in South Florida, studied industrial engineering at North Carolina State University, and then returned to Guatemala to teach literature for eight years at Universidad Francisco Marroquín. Named one of best young Latin American writers by the Hay Festival of Bogotá, he is also the recipient of the prestigious José María de Pereda Prize for the Short Novel. Although bilingual, Halfon chooses to write in Spanish and has published nine books of fiction. In 2011 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship to work on continuing the story The Polish Boxer, which is inspired by his own family history and is the first of his novels to be published in English. Halfon currently lives in Nebraska and travels frequently to Guatemala.

Armando Durán has appeared in films, television, and regional theaters throughout the West Coast. For the last decade he has been a member of the resident acting company at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. In 2009 he was named by AudioFile as Best Voice in Biography and History for his narration of Che Guevara. A native Californian, he divides his time between Los Angeles and Ashland, Oregon.

Daniel Hahn is the translator of Agualusa’s award-winning novels Creole and The Book of Chameleons, as well as My Father’s Wives.

Oliver Shah is the award-winning City Editor of The Sunday Times and one of the most respected national commentators on business and the high street. He was named business journalist of the year at the 2017 Press Awards for his investigation into Philip Green and was named business journalist of the year at the 2017 London Press Club Awards. Shah has been interviewed on Radio Four's Today Programme, BBC News, BBC Five Live and Sky News. He studied English Literature at Cambridge University and journalism at City University before joining City AM in 2009 and The Sunday Times in 2010. Aged 33, Shah lives in east London.

Lisa Dillman is a translator from Spanish and Catalan and a lecturer at Emory University.

Agustín Fernández Mallo was born in La Coruña, Spain in 1967. Before devoting himself full-time to his fiction and poetry, he worked for many years as an experimental physicist. His collected poems were published in Spain in 2012.

Thomas Bunstead has translated Enrique Vila-Matas, Aixa de la Cruz, Eduardo Halfon, Yuri Herrera, and Rodrigo Fresán. His own writing has appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, The Paris Review Daily, and TheIndependent on Sunday.

Anne McLean has won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize twice, as well as the Premio Valle Inclán. She has translated the works of Javier Cercas, Julio Cortázar, Carmen Martin Gaite, Ignacio Padilla, and Evelio Rosero.