Yana Ellis discovered her ideal career in her middle years and graduated in 2021 with merit in an MA in Translation from the University of Bristol. She translates from Bulgarian and German into English.
In 2022, Yana was shortlisted for the John Dryden Translation Competition for her translation of an excerpt from Berlin – Moscow: A Journey on Foot by Wolfgang Büscher. That same year, she was awarded an ALTA Travel Fellowship for translating an excerpt from A Space Bound by Shadows by Emine Sevgi Özdamar. Her translations of novel excerpts and short stories by Özdamar, Elena Alexieva, and Yordanka Beleva have appeared or are forthcoming in The Trinity Journal of Literary Translation, No Man’s Land, The Common, SAND Journal, Trafika Europe, and Turkoslavia. Her first book-length translation, The Wolves of Staro Selo by Zdravka Evtimova, recipient of the PEN Translates Award, is set to be published by Héloïse Press in March 2025.
