The Translator
Alison Layland won the Translators’ House/Wales Oxfam Cymru 2010 Translation Challenge with a translation of a short story by Yanick Lahens. Having graduated from Cambridge in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, Alison Layland is a translator from French, German and Welsh. She is a member of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting, Society of Authors and an Associate of the Welsh Academi.
The Author
Yanick Lahens lives in Haiti. She was born in Port au Prince before moving to France where she was educated at the Sorbonne. Lahens returned to Haiti where she has taught in universities and developed a social contract project. The author of three novels and story collections, her writing focuses on themes such as everyday violence against women, the lives of young people and problems of living in the city.
One of Haiti’s most prominent authors, Lahens dedicates a large part of her time to a foundation set up to train young Haitians in sustainable development.
The original French edition of The Colour of Dawn won RFO Award, Prix littéraire Richelieu de la Francophonie and Prix Millepages.Yanick Lahens is also the winner of the Leipzig Book Fair Literaturpreis.
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