K.E. Semmel

K.E. Semmel's work has appeared in Ontario Review, Washington Post, World Literature Today, Southern Review, Subtropics, Lithub, and elsewhere. His translations include books by Karin Fossum, Naja Marie Aidt, Jussi Adler Olsen, and Mathilde Walter Clark. He is a recipient of numerous grants from the Danish Arts Foundation and is a 2016 NEA Literary Translation Fellow. Completed novel manuscripts: THE BOOK of LOSMAN, IN THE COUNTRY OF MONSTROUS CREATURES, HELEN F'S WONDROUS WORLD OF WONDER (middle grade). Currently seeking new agent. Twitter: @kesemmel

About Lone Star: When Mathilde's stepfather dies in Denmark, she is plagued by worries about the potential death of her American father on the other side of the Atlantic. In a desire to catalog her love for, and memories with, her father, Mathilde travels to America and writes a novel about their relationship that she has always known she should write.

Lone Star is about distances: the miles between a father and daughter; the detachment between Mathilde's Danish upbringing and her American family; the separation of language; and the passage of time between Mathilde's adulthood and the summers she spent as a child in St. Louis. These irrevocable gaps swirl as Mathilde voyages to her father's household in Texas to explore a relationship that still has time to grow. At once a travelogue and family novel, Lone Star occupies the often-mythologized landscape of Texas to share a story of being alive and claiming the right to feel at home, even across the ocean.

Watch the book trailer for Danish novelist Simon Fruelund's novella Civil Twilight, translated by K.E. Semmel: