Slovak Literature in English Translation

Ján Gavura (1975) is a poet, translator, literary scholar, and publisher. After studying English and Slovak at PJ Šafárik University in Prešov, he studied Theology in the Faculty of Theology of the Ružomberok Catholic University in Spišská Kapitula, and he teaches Slovak Literature at Prešov University. A distinguished translator from English, Gavura has rendered into Slovak, among others, poetry collections by T. S. Eliot, Carol Anne Duffy, Richard Blanco, James Sutherland-Smith, and two novels by Cormack McCarthy. In 2011 he founded F.A.C.E. (Forum of Alternative Culture and Education), a non-profit that aims to promote literary culture by publishing Slovak and translated poetry, prose, children’s books, as well as literary scholarship; and since 2013, he has been the editor-in-chief of Vertigo, a journal on poetry and poets.  Gavura’s first collection of poetry, Pálenie včiel (Burning Bees) published in 2011, received the Ivan Krasko Prize for the best debut book in Slovak. It was followed by Každým ránom si (Every Morning You Are, 2006); Besa (2012) and Kráľ hlad (King Hunger, 2017), as well as books for children and works of literary scholarship. He is one of the two co-editors of Slovník diel slovenskej literatúry po r. 1989 (Encyclopaedia of works of Slovak literature after 1989, 2025), the first scholarly survey of this kind that provides summaries and assessments of 178 works of Slovak poetry and prose.