Alexandra Salmela: I like Slovak participles too...
– Slovakia
Born in 1980 in Bratislava, Slovakia, Alexandra Salmela graduated from stage direction at the Academy of Performing Arts in the same city. At the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague, she studied the Finnish language and literature. She lives in Tampere and writes both in Slovak and Finnish. The titles of her two novels are 27 aneb Smrt vás proslaví ( 27, or Death Will Make You Famous, 2010) and Antihrdina (The Anti-hero, 2017). She also published six children’s books, with the latest being Mimi a Líza I, II (Mimi and Lisa I, II, 2013, 2015). Her latest contribution was featured in the short-story collection Ži vo mne (Live Inside Me, 2018). “Slovak is often the more succinct and simpler language, I can express myself more accurately in it. But I like the sounds of Finnish and its space-saving non-finite clauses. I like Slovak participles too, but people tend to frown on them and it is hard to explain something so archaic in translation.”