Adult Fiction

Initially, Woodworm was a short story. It was summer, I was spending a few days at my grandmother’s house, which is the house that appears in the novel, and I was in my bedroom, about to go to sleep, when the wardrobe door opened. In that wardrobe are not everyday clothes, but special clothes for the family, like my grandmother’s wedding dress, the habit my uncle wears during Holy Week or the dress my grandmother wants to be buried in. The door opened by itself and it was quite scary, and in that moment I knew I wanted to write about the history of that closet, the history of the house and the history of the women who had lived in it.

― Layla Martinez, Center for the Art of Translation

Layla Martínez (Madrid, 1987) is the author of two nonfiction books in Spanish, Surrogate Pregnancy (Pepitas de calabaza, 2019) and Utopia is not an Island (Episkaia, 2020), as well as stories and articles in numerous anthologies. She has translated essays and novels, writes about music for El Salto, and about television for La Última Hora. Since 2014 she has co-directed the independent publisher Antipersona. Woodworm is her first novel.

Sophie Hughes is a British literary translator who primarily translates from Spanish to English. She has translated more than a dozen books, including the works of José Revueltas and Enrique Vila-Matas for New Directions. She was shortlisted for the 2019 and 2020 International Booker Prize.

Annie McDermott is a translator working from Spanish and Portuguese. Her published and forthcoming translations include Empty Words and The Luminous Novel by Mario Levrero, Dead Girls and Brickmakers by Selva Almada, Feebleminded by Ariana Harwicz (co-translation with Carolina Orloff), and Loop by Brenda Lozano. She also reviews books for the Times Literary Supplement. She has previously lived in Mexico City and São Paulo, Brazil, and now lives by the sea in Hastings, UK.