Polly Barton

Visiting Fellow for 2022-2023 Polly is a writer and translator of Japanese literature and non-fiction. In 2019 she was awarded the Fitzcarraldo Essay Prize for her non-fiction debut Fifty Sounds, a personal dictionary of the Japanese language which traces her encounters with it, as learner, translator and speaker, through fifty onomatopoeic Japanese words. Her work in translation has tended to focus on contemporary women’s fiction, and her recent translations include Spring Garden by Tomoka Shibasaki, There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura, So We Look to the Sky by Misumi Kubo, and Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda.