Clarissa Botsford Author & Translator

Born in Durres, Albania, Elvira Dones is a novelist, screenwriter and documentary film-maker currently dividing her time between the US, Switzerland and Albania. After seven novels in Albanian, she wrote the two most recent in Italian, her adopted language: Vergine giurata (Sworn Virgin, 2007) and Piccola guerra perfetta (Small Perfect War, 2010) about the Kosovo war. In her prize-winning documentary on the phenomenon of 'sworn virgins' in Albania, Dones interviews six survivors of the practice, one of whom emigrated to the US like Hana in the novel. A film adaptation of the novel Sworn Virgin was released in 2015. ------- Clarissa Botsford studied Italian at Cambridge and Comparative Education in London before moving to Rome. She has worked in the fields of teaching, intercultural education and publishing, and is also a musician. She currently teaches English and Translation Studies at Rome University and translates contemporary Italian fiction and poetry.