Ursula Kovalyk is a poet, fiction writer, playwright and social worker. She was born in 1969 in Kosice, eastern Slovakia and currently lives in the capital, Bratislava. She has published the short story collections, Neverné zeny neznásajú vajícka (Unfaithful Women Lay No Eggs, 2002) and Travesty sou (Travesty Show, 2004), and two novels, Zena zo sekáca (The Second-hand Woman 2008) and Krasojazdkyna (The Equestrienne, originally published in Slovak in 2013 and in English by Parthian in 2016) was shortlisted for Slovakia's most prestigious literary prize, the Anasoft Litera Award, and received the Bibliotéka Prize for 2013. Her most recent collection of short stories, Cisté zviera (A Pure Animal), appeared in 2018. Julia Sherwood was born and grew up in Bratislava, Slovakia, and worked for Amnesty International in London for over twenty years. Peter Sherwood taught Hungarian at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (now part of University College London) and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. They are based in London and work as freelance translators from and into English, Slovak, Czech, Hungarian, Polish and Russian. Their book-length translations include Peter Kristúfek's House of the Deaf Man (2014) and Ursula Kovalyk's The Equestrienne (2016) for Parthian, as well as works by Balla, Béla Hamvas, Hamid Ismailov, Daniela Kapitánová, Hubert Klimko-Dobrzaniecki, Petra Procházková, Noémi Szécsi, Antal Szerb, Miklós Vámos, and Pavel Vilikovský.