Selma Ancira

An award winning translator with a passion for photography.

Selma Ancira was born in Mexico City in 1956. She studied Russian Literature at the Moscow State University, and Greek Language and Literature at the University of Athens.

She is a literary translator by profession. Lev Tolstói and Marina Tsvietáieva are the two Russian writers she has mostly translated. From the world of Greek literature, she has translated into Spanish works by George Seferis, Yiannis Ritsos, Iakovos Kampanellis, as well as the novel Loxandra by Maria Iordanidou.

She has received numerous literary prizes, amongst which are the Pushkin Medal (2008), the Ángel Crespo prize for translation (Barcelona, 2009), and the literary prizes Marina Tsvietáieva (Russia, 2010) and Maximilian Voloshin (Ukraine, 2010). In 2011 she was awarded Spain's National Prize for Translation, and in 2012 she was granted the First Prize for Literary Translation Tomás Segovia in Mexico.

In addition to translation, she is passionate about photography. Selma Ancira lives in Barcelona.