World Kid Lit blog, the @worldkidlit social media accounts, and the World Kid Lit month (September) campaign are run by an informal collective of volunteers. You can email us at worldkidlit@gmail.com or contact us via social media: see the Get involved page for links.
Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp ~ co-editor of World Kid Lit blog; social media
Ruth is a literary translator, who translates fiction and non-fiction from Russian, German and Arabic. She has translated children’s books from Germany, Morocco, Palestine, Russia, Switzerland and Syria. Ruth is also co-editor of Russian Kid Lit blog and ArabKidLitNow.
Claire Storey ~ co-editor of World Kid Lit blog; social media
Claire is a literary translator working from German and Spanish into English. She was shortlisted for the 2019 Goethe-Institut Award for New Translation and the 2020 Austrian Cultural Forum London Translation Prize (Aspiring Translator category). Claire regularly volunteers in schools talking about careers with languages. www.clairestoreylanguages.co.uk
Mohini Gupta ~ World Kid Lit LIVE; social media
Mohini is a writer/translator based in New Delhi. She has been a Charles Wallace India Trust Fellow in 2017, and a Sangam House translator-in-residence in 2015. Her translations have been published by Tulika Publishers. She runs the digital Indian language poetry collective for young readers, Mother Tongue Twisters.
M. Lynx Qualey ~ World Kid Lit LIVE; social media
M. Lynx Qualey is founding editor of the translation-community website ArabLit, which won a 2017 London Book Fair prize. The project has since expanded to ArabKidLitNow!, the ArabLit Story Prize, and the ArabLit Quarterly magazine. MLQ is also co-host of the popular BULAQ podcast, and she writes regularly for a variety of publications.
Helen Wang ~ World Kid Lit Twitter
Helen translates contemporary Chinese literature, including novels, picture books and graphic novels for children and young adults. In 2017 she won the Marsh Award for Children’s Literature in Translation and a Chen Bochui Special Award. She works collaboratively with the China Fiction Book Club, Paper Republic, and the Leeds Centre for New Chinese Writing. In 2016, she co-founded Chinese Books for Young Readers.
Anam Zafar ~ World Kid Lit Facebook Admin
Anam is an emerging literary translator based in Birmingham, UK. She translates from Arabic and French into English. She was a 2020/21 mentee on the National Centre for Writing’s Emerging Translators Mentorship. www.anamzafar.com
Regular contributors to World Kid Lit blog
Alexandra Büchler is director of Literature Across Frontiers, editor and translator of prose, poetry and non-fiction with thirty publications to her name. She has edited six anthologies of short fiction in translation and was series editor of Arc Publications‘ bilingual poetry anthologies New Voices from Europe and Beyond 2006-2016.
Megan Farr is Marketing and Publicity Manager at Firefly Press and currently researching into ‘Strategic Action for Internationalisation of the Children’s Publishing Sector in Wales’, as part of a creative industries PhD at the Mercator Centre at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David funded by the KESS II European Social Fund and sponsored by the Books Council of Wales.
Johanna McCalmont was born in Northern Ireland and now lives in Brussels, Belgium where she works from French, German, Dutch and Italian. Her translations have been published by the New Books in German Emerging Translators programme and No Man’s Land. She loves connecting writers with audiences when interpreting at literary festivals and has a particular interest in African literature. www.johannamccalmont.com
Award-winning opera singer Nanette McGuinness is the translator of over 50 books and graphic novels for children and adults from French, Italian, and German into English, including the well-known Geronimo Stilton Graphic Novels. Two of her latest translations, Luisa: Now and Then (Humanoids, 2018) and California Dreamin’: Cass Elliot Before the Mamas & the Papas (First Second, 2017) were chosen for YALSA’s Great Graphic Novels for Teens; Luisa: Now and Then was also a 2019 Stonewall Honor Book.
Lawrence Schimel is a bilingual (Spanish/English) writer and translator based in Madrid, Spain. He’s published over 120 books as author or anthologist, for readers of all ages. His books have won the Crystal Kite from SCBWI, a White Raven from the International Youth Library in Munich, and have twice been chosen by IBBY for Outstanding Books for Young People with Disabilities, and his translations have won the GLIL Best Translated YA Honor Title and a PEN Translates Award from English PEN, among other honors.
Mia Spangenberg is an emerging translator from Finnish and German whose work includes many sample translations of children’s books. Mia is an active member of ALTA, the American Literary Translators Association.
Avery Fischer Udagawa serves as International Translator Coordinator and Japan Translator Coordinator for the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Her translations from Japanese for children and teens include J-Boys: Kazuo’s World, Tokyo, 1965 by Shogo Oketani and “Firstclaw” by Sachiko Kashiwaba at Words Without Borders. She lives near Bangkok.
Jackie Friedman Mighdoll writes for children: poetry, picture books, and middle grade. She translates from Japanese to English. In a prior career, she founded a school for teaching world languages to children from newborn to elementary. She loves to explore the world through travel, language, and dessert! On the web at www.jackiefm.com/ On Twitter:@jackiefm
