Samanta Schweblin was born in Buenos Aires in 1978. When she was 22 years old she won the Haroldo Conti National Award for the short story “To the joyous civilization of the capital,” and the Award of the National Endowment for the Arts with her first book, The Core of the Disturbance. Her second book of short stories, Birds in the mouth, won the Casa de las Américas Prize in 2008. She was chosen as one of the 22 best writers in Spanish under the age of 35 by the British magazine Granta. In 2012 she won the prestigious Juan Rulfo Short Story Prize for “A Man with No Luck.” She has received scholarships from a number of institutions, spending time in Oaxaca (Mexico), Umbria and Toscana (Italy), and Berlin (Germany), where she currently lives. In 2014 she published her first novella, Distance Rescue. In 2015 she has won the most important prize in Spain for short stories, International Short Story Award Ribera del Duero, for the book Empty Houses. Her work has been translated into 15 languages.