Bio note

Jan Machej (1976) is a translator and publisher from Poděbrady, Czechia. He completed a Master's program in Bulgarian and Spanish philology at the Masaryk University in Brno. In 2012, together with two of his friends, he founded a small publishing house 'Runa', in which he translates and publishes translations of ignored, undiscovered and unknown to the general public Spanish and South Slavic authors.

He has translated novels by Juan José Saer, Julio Llamazares, Héctor Tizón, Mario Benedetti, Eduardo Berti, Martín Kohan, Hernán Rivera Letelier, Carlos María Domínguez, Lorena Salazar Masso, Federico Jeanmaire, among others. He also translates poetry and cooperates with other publishing houses. Despite this - or because of this - he earns his living with court translations from Spanish and Bulgarian. In 2022 he completed the long-distance trail Kom - Emine on his own in an attempt to penetrate as deeply as possible into the heart and spirit of Bulgaria.

Residency goals

During his creative residency in Sofia, Jan intends to finish the translation of two collections of short stories - 'Keder' and 'The hedgehogs go out at night', both by Yordanka Beleva, which will be published in 2025 by his publishing house. At the same time, he would like to do a deeper reading of some of the novels of other Bulgarian authors, which he plans to publish in the future, among which Emil Andreev, Evgeni Cherepov, Vesela Lyakhova, Galin Nikiforov.

The residency is supported by the project Archipelagos, co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union and by the National Culture Fund, Bulgaria.