Fum d’Estampa Press: an indie publisher translating Catalan books into English

Fum d’Estampa Press was founded in 2019, right before the pandemic hit, by Douglas Suttle, a British writer, translator, editor, and lover of Catalan literature who has lived in Catalonia for the past decade. Since then, what began as “an ambitious hobby” has published more than 15 translations, including works from the likes of renowned Catalan authors, such as ‘Goodbye, Ramona’, by Montserrat Roig, ‘Wilder Winds’ by Bel Olid, or ‘One Day of Life is Life’ by Joan Maragall, and already has around 100 subscribers.

The indie publisher’s goal, Suttle told VilaWeb English two years ago in an interview, is double: “We want to bring together the two parts of the puzzle: provide the English-speaking world with beautiful poetry and great stories, while promoting Catalan language and literature”.

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As Suttle told the Catalan News Agency at the London Book Fair, they don’t intend to sell Catalan literature for the sake of promoting books by Catalan writers, but to sell books because “they are good literature.” According to him, Catalonia has a “very rich” literary tradition “with a long history.” “Considering there are only 10 million Catalan speakers and their literature is not relatively well known around the world, the country does have a lot of publishers and interesting works are published every year,” Suttle said.

Only 6% of books published in the United Kingdom are translations – a figure that’s increased slightly over the past few years. “Translations are becoming more important in England. Their market share is still small, but interest in them is going up,” Suttle says.