Ivana Dobrakovová:

Born in 1982 in Bratislava. She studied translation and interpreting at Comenius University in Bratislava. Since 2005, she has been living in Turin. She works as a translator. She has published two collections of  short stories Prvá smrť v rodine [First Death in the Family], 2009 and Toxo (2013), and the novel Bellevue (2010). “I don’t think that a person has the freedom in writing as it may seem at first sight,” she says. “I don’t think I could now decide to write an incredibly cheerful text or something that would not really matter to me. Or rather I could, but the result would definitely end up in the waste basket. I think the topics choose the authors, not the other way round.”