Márton Simon was born in 1984 in Kalocsa, Hungary. His debut poetry collection was published in 2010 under the title Dalok a magasföldszintről (Songs for 3:45AM) and was reprinted in 2014. Simon rose to popularity in Hungary with his second book, Polaroidok (Polaroids), which appeared in 2013. He is now considered the most widely read contemporary poet in Hungary. His latest collection, Rókák esküvője (Fox Wedding), hit bookshelves in the fall of 2018. He translates English-language and Japanese writers such as Jennifer Egan, Etgar Keret, Shuntaro Tanikawa, and Ryuichi Tamura into Hungarian. He has received numerous awards and grants for his work, including the Makói Medal, the Móricz Zsigmond Literary Fellowship, the Visegrad Fund Literary Fellowship for Krakow, Horváth Péter Literary Fellowship. English translations of his work by Timea Balogh have appeared or are forthcoming in Waxwing, Modern Poetry in Translation, Duende, and The Enchanting Verses Literary Review. He lives in Budapest.
Timea Balogh is a Hungarian-American writer and translator with an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. A 2017 American Literary Translators Association Travel Fellow, her translations of Hungarian poetry and prose have appeared or are forthcoming in The Offing, Brooklyn Rail’s InTranslation, Asymptote, Waxwing, Two Lines Journal, Arkansas International, and the Wretched Strangers anthology by Boiler House Press, among others. Her debut original short story was nominated by Juked for a PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. She has stories forthcoming in Prairie Schooner and Passages North and is a scholarship recipient and graduate of the 2019 AWP Tin House Fiction Workshop. She divides her time between Budapest and Las Vegas. You can find her on Twitter: @TimeaRozalia.
By Márton Simon (Translated by Timea Balogh)
“I smear the makeup you left behind / on my face in an effort to love myself. / And I think I’ll eventually drink these two bottles / of perfume that have been here since— / what else could I do with them?”