Martina Greňová Šimkovičová looks back
As Martina Greňová Šimkovičová leaves Radio Slovakia International after over two decades of reporting, we have asked her to look back at her years of championing Slovak literature in English translation. We would like to thank Martina for her tireless work and wish her the best of luck in her future endeavours.
Back in 2000, when I started at the English service of Slovak Radio International, there was only one collection of Slovak poetry published in English. Not Waiting for Miracles was its title. I had the privilege of not only having to wait but by 2026 to be able to map the miracle of the rise of Slovak literature in English translation.
As senior editor with a degree in Slovak as well as English language and literature, I saw it as my duty to cover the launch of the English translation of P.O. Hviezdoslav’s Bloody Sonnets at the British Library back in November 2018. That was the very first time I met John Minahane but mainly Julia Sherwood who introduced me to several British publishers of Slovak literature in English translation. I feel honoured to have conducted interviews with publishers such as Donald Rayfield, Richard Davies, Michael Tate, Karolinum Press’s Martin Janeček and others as well as international scholars and translators including Charles Sabatos, Rajendra Chitnis, Julia Sherwood, like Katarína Gephard, and Tim Beasley Murray as well as Slovak authors and scholars including Ján Gavura, Ivana Hostová, Dobrota Pucherová and Radoslav Passia.
I met them not only at conferences such as the one on Slovak literature in 2019 in London that marked the 30th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution but also at the very first European Writers Festival in London in 2023. As part of my Culture News and later Culture Tips segment, I invited foreign listeners to several public readings of Slovak literature in translation and to Slovak stands at international book fairs including those in London, Lyon, Leipzig and Bologna. All of that so to show foreign audiences that quality
Slovak literature is equal to global top names, an effort that resulted in the “Summer reading with RSI series” of reading excerpts of 5 short stories from the anthology The Book of Bratislava published by Comma Press in 2026.
During the COVID 19 period, I contacted Vlado Rosenfeld, a Slovak 1968 emigré who now lives in Hawaii and has helped bring out Maidens/Devy, the bilingual Slovak-English poetry debut by his late wife Oľga Urminská by the Slovak publishing house Horská lucerna. I met Vlado again in autumn 2026 at the start of his Slovak tour with yet another bilingual book, his own collection of stories for kids, Noah’s ladders.
The translation of Pavol Országh Hviezdoslav’s Bloody Sonnets was my first report on Slovak literature in English translation and it is only fitting that my concluding show for RSI, which aired on 20 October, was also linked to the great Slovak poet. It featured material on the 2026 P.O. Hviezdoslav award for translating and promoting Slovak literature abroad. As the recipient, David Short, the British scholar and translator from Czech and Slovak, was unable to collect the award in person, it was collected on his behalf by Julia Sherwood whom I interviewed along with Dado Nagy and talked about David Short and his translation of the first ever novel in the history of Slovak literature, René: A Young Man’s Adventures and Experiences to the scholar and one of the book’s editors Dobrota Pucherová. It was sad to be leaving my beloved job but I felt like I came full circle.