Yulia Dobrovolskaia (Leningrad/Barcelona) has made a career over the last two decades by combining translation with her work as a literary agent. Together with José María Muñoz Rovira, she has translated more than twenty titles by authors of the stature of Alexievich, Ulitskaya, Aksionov, Shklovsky, Buida and Gorky into Spanish. For their translation of Day of the Oprichnik by Vladímir Sorokin (El día del oprichnik, Alfaguara, 2009), they won the 2010 Russian literature in Spain award. At the head of the ELKOST agency, Yulia represents the biggest names in contemporary Russian letters globally, as well as managing literary archives and legacies of key 20th-century thinkers. For her, translation is an analytical, creative process that calls for absolute mingling with the original: an exercise that refines the agent’s instinct for navigating the waters of today’s literary translation in search of new talent.
- 2026 Edition, Facilitators 26
