August Salon: Literature in Translation Panel

Join us in August as translators Elizabeth Bryer and Damien Mittas speak with Gazebo publisher Xavier Hennekinne and Olivia Arcaro.
About this Event

This August, to mark Women in Translation Month, independent publisher Gazebo Books will be back collaborating with The Paperback on a special evening of insights to literature in translation.

Join us to hear from local translators of contemporary literature Elizabeth Bryer, Damien Mittas and Gazebo publisher Xavier Hennekinne, about what they aim to bring readers.

The panel will be moderated by publishing professional Olivia Arcaro.

Bios:

Elizabeth Bryer is a translator from the Spanish and an author. The novels she has most recently translated from Spanish are Eduardo Sangarcía’s The Trial of Anna Thalberg, for which she won the 2025 NSW Premier’s Translation Prize, and María José Ferrada’s companion novellas How to Order the Universe and How to Turn Into a Bird. Others include Aleksandra Lun’s The Palimpsests, awarded a PEN/Heim Translation fund grant from PEN America in 2017; Claudia Salazar Jiménez’s Americas Prize–winning Blood of the Dawn; and José Luis de Juan’s Napoleon’s Beekeeper.

Damien Mittas is a translator from the German working on contemporary literature. His first book-length publication, Enis Maci's Eiscafé Europa, was published in 2026 by Hela Press. He is interested in bringing innovative, critical, and beautiful writing in German to an English audience.

Xavier Hennekinne is the co-founder and publisher of Gazebo. Growing up in France and working with international NGOs and the United Nations before settling in Sydney, he brings to the Australian literary scene a passion for sharing stories that explore different cultures and styles of writing. A writer himself, Hennekinne is the author of the novel Unequal Loves and the illustrated collection of vignettes Lost Words, and his short stories and essays have appeared in literary journals worldwide.