Hailing from a small town in Canada, London is now my home, with its rich cultural life playing a huge part in my work. My first translation, The Contract Killer, a play by the Danish author Benny Andersen, was staged by Foreign Affairs theatre company for the book launch at the Danish Church in London. I’ve since worked with Foreign Affairs on a further three Danish plays and two collaborative translations of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. Early career training opportunities with the British Centre for Literary Translation (BCLT) and National Centre for Writing (NCW) have won me over to the joys of co-translation, and I’ve now collaborated with dozens of translators and other artists on a vast array of projects.
At University College London (UCL), I specialised in Scandinavian literature, history and politics, with a healthy dose of Old Norse language and mythology thrown in. A year abroad in Copenhagen allowed me to master different aspects of the Danish language – studying at the University of Copenhagen during the day, taking evening language courses at night, working in a Danish bar and playing handball with Danish students on the weekends. These all contributed to a near mastery of spoken Danish, culminating in my completion of Studieprøven, the Danish Higher Education Examination. After graduating from UCL with a distinction in Danish, putting my language skills to good use seemed the obvious path to pursue. My reading of Swedish and Norwegian literature, combined with my study of Old Norse, gave me the ability to work with all three Scandinavian languages. Further translation training and support from NORLA and the Danish Arts Foundation proved vital in expanding my knowledge of the languages and cultures of Norway and Denmark.