Idara Crespi
Literary Translator & Founding Editor
Idara Crespi was born in Milan and grew up between Italy and Canada. She studied Journalism at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology in Calgary, a practical education oriented toward readers rather than disciplines, and came to translation through her work writing about arts and culture. She was reviewing an Italian novel when she found that the published English translation had made it smaller in every way that mattered. When the review was done, she translated the novel herself. Espresso Publishing House grew from that project.
Her work begins with a question that guides everything Espresso Publishing House does: which novels, celebrated in their original languages and beloved by generations of readers in France, Italy, Spain, or Germany, have never been adequately translated into English? And which of those deserve the careful, unhurried editorial attention that turns a competent translation into a book worth reading?
The answer, she has found, is a longer list than most readers would expect. The English-language literary canon is remarkable. It is also, by any measure, incomplete. The gap between what has been translated and what deserves to be translated is one of the most interesting territories in literature.
Her editions are made with care. Each title she translates carries an original introduction, placing the work and its author in their historical and literary moment without trying to do the reading for the reader.
Her first translation, The Blind Woman of Sorrento by Francesco Mastriani, was published in March 2026, the first complete English translation of a novel once read by millions of Italians across the peninsula. She is currently at work on two further Italian titles: Giovanni Verga’s Story of a Blackcap (pre-order now; forthcoming March 2027) and Marta, or Faith, the opening volume of Mastriani’s epic I Misteri di Napoli, forthcoming in September 2026.
Espresso Publishing House
Espresso Publishing House is a boutique literary imprint dedicated to foreign-language fiction that merits an English-language life. We look for works that are legally available, commercially interesting, and, above all, worth reading: novels with literary ambition, historical depth, and the power to surprise readers who encounter them for the first time.
We do not republish existing translations. Each Espresso edition is a new translation made directly from the original-language source text, prepared specifically for a contemporary English-language audience. We care about the quality of the translation, the design of the book, and the framing that helps readers understand why they are holding something worth their time.
Our catalogue currently spans Italian and Spanish literature, with French, German, and Russian titles in preparation. The Espresso Italian Classics series launched in March 2026 with Francesco Mastriani’s The Blind Woman of Sorrento. The Espresso Spanish Classics series launched in May 2026 with Alarcón’s The Three-Cornered Hat, translated by Inés Bou. The Espresso French Classics series opens in July 2026 with Pierre Loti’s Madame Chrysanthème, translated by Clémence Aubert, available to pre-order now.
The name reflects our ambitions: concentrated, carefully made, small-batch. European in spirit, international in scope. Every title we publish is there because we believe it belongs.
The gap between what deserves to be translated into English and what has been translated is larger than most readers suspect. Every title in the Espresso catalogue is our answer to that gap.
What We Look For
When Idara Crespi considers a title for Espresso Publishing House, she runs it past a small set of questions: partly editorial, partly practical, partly intuitive. Literary merit is necessary, not sufficient. What EPH looks for is the overlap between literary quality and a particular kind of English-language opportunity.
The works that interest us were genuinely read in their language of origin: not merely studied or anthologised, but loved. They have either never been translated into English at all, or they have been translated in ways that are no longer adequate: Victorian paraphrases, abridged editions, renderings that were competent for their era but now stand between the novel and contemporary readers. They still have something to say about money, desire, class, place, and the forces that shape a life, regardless of when they were written. And they can sustain careful translation without requiring readers who already know the cultural context.
On the practical side, EPH looks for works where our edition can be meaningfully better than anything currently available in English. That standard guides every decision, from selection through translation, editorial framing, and design. If a genuinely excellent English edition of a title already exists, EPH moves on. The point is not to publish another version of a great novel. It is to publish the version that should have existed years ago.
Not every work that meets those criteria makes the final list. The catalogue grows through restraint as much as ambition. But every title that does appear in it is there because it passed all of these tests, and because we believed, at the end of that process, that the right readers were waiting for it.
On Translation
Every Espresso Publishing House edition begins with the original. Not a previous translation, not a summary or adaptation. The source text in its original language, read closely, worked through sentence by sentence. What emerges is a new English text: one made specifically for contemporary readers, not constrained by the conventions of earlier translation eras or the limits of a different generation’s English.
The novels EPH publishes were written in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. That era’s Italian, French, Spanish, German, and Russian prose has its own rhythms, its own formal conventions, its own relationship between sentence structure and tone. A translation that simply updates the vocabulary while leaving the architecture of the original intact often produces something that reads like a period piece rather than a living text. EPH’s approach is the reverse: stay faithful to what the original actually does. Its wit, its pacing, its register. Find the English that delivers the same effect to a reader who has never encountered the source.
Each title also includes an original introduction, a translator’s note, and where the text requires it, historical notes. These are not academic apparatus. They are part of the reading experience: the framing that lets a first-time reader understand what they’re holding, where the author came from, and why the novel still has something to say. The apparatus should open the book, not close it down.
EPH works with specialist translators assigned by language, each responsible for a particular literary tradition and each building expertise in the specific prose voice of their authors. That depth is not incidental. You translate a novelist differently after you’ve read three of his novels than after you’ve read one. The translations reflect it.
Our Translators
Espresso Publishing House works with a team of specialist translators. Each is assigned a language tradition and works with EPH across multiple titles, building continuity and depth within their literary field.
- Italian Idara Crespi
- Spanish Inés Bou
- French Clémence Aubert
- German Renata Lenz
- Russian Mira Sorokina
- Swedish Linnea Wahlström
- Portuguese Mariana Quintela
Read their full profiles, and the books each of them has translated for us →
Contact
We try to route correspondence to the right person from the start. Choose the address that fits your enquiry.
Booksellers, libraries, museums & trade
For ordering enquiries, Preferred Retailer Program, trade terms, and institutional purchases.
Press, reviewers, bloggers & reading groups
For review copy requests, press enquiries, reading group resources, and blogger and media outreach.
Rights, translation & general editorial
For rights enquiries, translation proposals, and editorial correspondence with Idara Crespi directly.
12, 2333 18th Ave NE
Calgary, AB T2E 8T6