Slovak Literature in English Translation

Uršuľa Kovalyk (1969) is a fiction writer and playwright. She is the co-founder and director of Theatre Without a Home, which works with the homeless and the disabled. She is a leading voice in the contemporary feminist literary discourse in Slovakia. Her work focuses on female characters often living unfulfilled and austere lives under the pressure of a patriarchal society, and more recently, on environmental issues and aging. Her works have been translated into nine languages. She has published several collections of short stories and a novel, The Equestrienne (2013), which received the Bibliotéka Prize for 2013 and was shortlisted for Slovakia’s most prestigious literary prize, the Anasoft Litera Award; the English translation was longlisted for the 2018 European Bank for Research and Development Literary Prize. Her most recent collection of short stories, A Pure Animal, appeared in 2018.