Margus Lattik (Estonia) (Dec 2018 -Jan 2019)

Franca Mancinelli (Italy) (Jan 2019- Feb 2019)

Margus Lattik, b. 1973, better known by his pen-name Mathura, is an Estonian writer, artist, translator and publisher, winner of the Gustav Suits Literary Award (2014) for his collection „Käe all voogav joon” („The Line Flowing Beneath Your Hand”) and Viru County Literary Award for year’s best historical novel (2017). He has published eight collections of poetry and a travelogue, as well as a short novel. Much of his writing is closely connected to his native landscape, though influenced by Oriental thinking. His list of translations include classical Indian texts like „Bhagavad-gita” or Bhartrihari’s „Vairagya-sataka”, but also many works of contemporary Western authors. His own work has been translated into  a dozen languages, including book-length selections in Finnish, English and Spanish. He contributes regularly to the Estonian National Broadcast and is now part of a culture festival Särin (Sizzle). He is a member of the Estonian Writers Union.

Further information and sample translations can be found at Estonian Literature Center page:
http://estlit.ee/elis/?cmd=writer&id=56019&grp=x1

Franca Mancinelli was born in Fano, Italy, in 1981. Her first book of poetry, Mala kruna (Manni, 2007), won the L’Aquila First Book Award as well as the Giuseppe Giusti Prize. Her second book, Pasta madre (with a postface by Milo De Angelis; Nino Aragno Editore, 2013), was then awarded the Alpi Apuane, the Carducci, and the Ceppo-Giovani Prizes. A selections of poems from the latter volume initially appeared in Nuovi poeti italiani 6, edited by Giovanna Rosadini (Einaudi, 2012). Her work has also been featured in several anthologies, including XIII Quaderno italiano di poesia contemporanea (Marcos y Marcos, 2017), edited by Franco Buffoni. As a critic, she contributes to Poesia and to other literary journals. She is an editor for the literary review Smerilliana, the poetry-magazine Argo-annuario di poesia, and the blog Interno poesia. Her writing has been translated into English, Spanish, Arabic, French, and Slovene. Her first two books have been recently reprinted as A un’ora di sonno da qui (At an hour’s sleep from here), by Italic Pequod (2018). In 2018 appeared a collection of prose poems, Libretto di transito (Amos Edizioni); this book translated in english by John Taylor, with the title The Little Book of Passage, has been published by The Bitter Oleander Press (Fayetteville, New York, 2018). Her texts have appeared in spanish translation in the anthology Italia poesía: presente. Antología de poesía italiana contemporánea, Huerga & Fierro editores, Madrid 2017. A selection of her texts, is published in slovenian translation in the booklet of the festival “Days of poetry and wine”, Naš prvi dih, by Beletrina (Lubiana 2017).
She is a jury member for the poetry awards “Il Castello di Villalta-giovani” and “Le stanze del tempo” (Fondazione Claudi).  
She is currently attending a PHD in Linguistic, literature and translation at the University of Malaga (Spain).

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