Natasha Wimmer

Natasha Wimmer grew up in Iowa.[3] She learned Spanish in Spain, where she spent four years growing up. She studied Spanish literature at Harvard University.[2] Her first job after graduating was at Farrar, Straus & Giroux from 1996 to 1999 as an assistant and then managing editor.[1] During her time there, she produced her first translation, the Dirty Havana Trilogy by the Cuban novelist Pedro Juan Gutiérrez.[2]

Wimmer then worked at Publishers Weekly, before leaving to work on Bolaño's books full-time.[1] "My reason for going into publishing in the first place was that I had decided in college that I would never be a fiction writer, but I knew I wanted to be as close to books as I could. Publishing was one way, and translating turned out to be a better way for me."[1]

She has also translated Nobel Prize-winner Mario Vargas Llosa's The Language of Passion, The Way to Paradise, and Letters to a Young Novelist; and Marcos Giralt Torrente's Father and Son.

Wimmer has written for The Nation and The New York Times.[4] She teaches translation at Princeton University.[4]

Wimmer received the PEN Translation Prize in 2009. She won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction in 2008[4] for her translation of 2666[3] and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2010.[4]