KatStorace

Praspar Press seeks to build a bridge and fill a gap: that of enabling Maltese works to be published in the UK and reach a wider audience.

Kat Storace was born in 1987 in Balzan. Storace completed her BA in English, continuing with a Master in Modern and Contemporary Literature and Criticism, both at the University of Malta. She then went on to complete a Masters in Publishing at Oxford Brookes University. Whilst still in Malta, she was deputy editor and editor at the Sunday Circle. Storace is a visiting lecturer in linguistics with the Department of English at the University of Malta. In London, she has held positions at Faber and Faber, and was a curative strategist at Gunter Piekarski.

Storace translated Loranne Vella’s Mill-bieb ’il ġewwa (What Will it Take for Me to Leave) (2021) from Maltese into English. It was shortlisted for the Society of Authors TA First Translation Prize in 2022. This short story collection revolves around various characters as they go about playing the game of life. We see how their voices change as they change, making the reader question our terms of engagement with ourselves and each other, as well as with time and place. The work is complimented by photographs taken by Zvezdan Reljić.

When it comes to Praspar Press, Storace and Calleja have edited and published the ‘Scintillas: New Maltese Writing’ series. These editions place prose, poetry and literary non-fiction side by side, always dividing the works into two separate yet related segments. The first edition (2021) split its meditative pieces into ‘Fables/Ħrejjef’ and ‘Reflections/Riflessi’. The second (2022) explores all the seasons of a life, and is divided into ‘Juice/Meraq’ and ‘Skin/Qoxra’. The third edition of ‘Scintillas’ will be published in November 2023.

Storace is interested in continuing her exploration of memoir and creative non-fiction as well as essay writing. For her, there is no one single language or history that defines a voice, the Maltese voice in particular, or what it means to be Maltese. She believes that as writers, and as a nation, we have barely scratched the surface of this/these reality/realities. There is also beauty in the challenge of putting one’s finger on an ever-moving, ever-evolving picture – the struggle to place the mirror and find one’s reflection clearly reflected in it, along with that of others. There are so many layers to uncover, so many similarities and differences, and maybe it is the uniqueness in all of this that reminds us of who we are and what we stand for.