A family member of mine in Denmark is a young writer (my niece). It does not come from strangers, both her parents have books published.

She writes short stories in the SF and Fantasy genre – and as far as I know, she is writing on a fantasy novel. She has had a few short stories published in Denmark – in collections with other writers.

In 2004 and 2005 she won a Danish SF award in the category 17 – 20 years old writers – and in 2006 at the Eurocon in Kiev the Danish delegation made a presentation on her behalf, and she was awarded an Encouragement Award for New Writers. I had to find thet out by looking into the list of award winners, because she never told me. Imagine my surprise at seeing only two Western European names among the long list of Eastern European writers, one of them hers.

At the Eurocon 2007 she was asked to contribute an English language short story for a “Fanzine” short story collection to be released in connection with the Eurocon. Since she does not write very well in English, she asked me to assist with a translation. The story is only 6 – 7 pages long, so I got started. Not as easy as most people would think, since I wanted to translate the sense of the story, not just the words.

So there you have it – my own little contribution to the Eurocon 2007.

The book has the title “Science Fiction – The Danish Fanzine!” (Issue 15/2007)

On another note, I was talking to another participant of the ‘con and, since he had the book, I mentioned the story and he immidiately went to my young niece and asked her to sign the book. He argued that young writers should be encouraged. I should have been quick with the camera (I wasn’t), because this was a first time experience for her.

As an aside, she had another short story in a book released at the ‘con , albeit in Danish. That book is titled “Lige Under Overfladen” (Just Below the Surface) and is a collection of short stories from young European writers (not yet well known, but who knows if and when ?)

Actually I made a second contribution by taking photos at the convention and delivering 2 CDs with all pics taken on the Friday and Saturday of the convention.

A large selection of those have been published here .