Prose at The Poetry Center: Donal McLaughlin
Featured in Best European Fiction 2012 (Dalkey Archive) as both an author and a translator, McLaughlin was born in Derry in the north of Ireland, but moved to Scotland in 1970. The author of two short-story collections — an allergic reaction to national anthems (2009) and beheading the virgin mary and other stories (2014) — McLaughlin won the Robert Louis Stevenson Memorial Award, was Scottish PEN’s first écrivain sans frontières and is a former Hawthornden Fellow. He has represented the city of Glasgow in both Nuremberg (Hermann Kesten Fellow) and Berne (Swiss Literary Exchange) and was a founding member of the Scottish Writers’ Centre. His translations include more than 100 writers for the New Swiss Writing anthologies (2008 – 2011) and numerous novels. He is the voice of Urs Widmer in English and was shortlisted for the Best Translated Book Award 2013 (USA). In 2013, Freight Books (Glasgow) published naw much of a talker, McLaughlin’s highly praised translation of a novel written in Swiss dialect by Pedro Lenz. Next April, in Zurich, McLaughlin will receive the Max Geilinger Prize in recognition of his achievements as a mediator of Swiss writing.