LITERARY AGENCY
BUENOS AIRES · JOHANNESBURG
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Drift is a literary agency that offers representation and translation services to African writers. Based in Johannesburg and Buenos Aires, we work with a network of Latin American and Spanish publishers to bring African authors closer to Spanish-speaking readers. With an intersectional approach in mind, we believe in the strength of language and the beauty of poetry as mechanisms to build relationships and create bridges between the literary and the social world. Our purpose as an agency is grounded in the belief that to tell is also to live. We know that speaking -narrating- is not a neutral but rather a truly performative act.
It is in that context that our interest in the nature of creative writing practices is born.
drift looks for stories that create space for otherness and ambiguity, in the past and in the present, but especially where the personal and political arenas overlap. We are interested in authors who work with their intimate surroundings; authors who explore their bodies, their spirituality, their families, the spaces they inhabit and the worlds and possibilities created by their imaginations. We search for written pieces that are living geographies. The stories of the authors we represent are transferred to a particular language rooted in the ways they choose to speak, to desire and how they identify themselves. We promote a selection of liter ary pieces where writing takes a corpo real entity, and where literature is also a nomadic practice. drift looks for authors who understand writing as a place where experiences are amalgamated and consolidated. A place where, as the Argentinian author Camila Sosa Villada says, words can “twist everything, take the softest or the lightest thing and turn it into the heaviest of substances”
In 2014, while working as journalists at Revista Chocha, a cultural and feminist online magazine in Argentina, Julia and Bárbara formed a deep and resounding friendship through their mutual love of literature. A couple of years later, Bárbara moved to Johannesburg for work and the decision was made that Julia would come to South Africa to visit. When Julia finally arrived, in 2019, a previously much anticipated road trip was soon a reality. They rented a car and traversed different coastal routes and landscapes. At each stop, they visited bookstores and thought that most of the books by authors they enjoyed reading were not translated into Spanish. It was only later, in 2020, that Julia proposed the idea of starting an agency themselves and to build a project that could bring these authors closer to readers from other parts of the world. Bárbara jumped at the idea.
At that moment, drift was born, as a result of their friendship and their personal experience. A project that gives meaning to what they do and who they are.
Born in Córdoba, Argentina, in 1989, Julia works and lives in Buenos Aires. She graduated in Sociology from Universidad de Buenos Aires and received a Master’s degree in Documentary Film in Universidad del Cine, having thoroughly investigated films made by women from the late 20th century until today.
She has taken writing workshops with Leonel D’Agostino, Irene Ickowicz, Jorge La Ferla, Inés Garland and Manuel Alvarez. Since 2014, she has been writing about cinema and literature in different Latin American media outlets, such as Girls at Films (Mex), Revista Chocha (Arg), God/Art (Ecu) and Vocanova (Mex).
Her short films as a director, The Mirror’s Drawer (2017), The Fog (2018) and The Days After (2020), have premiered at various film festivals. In 2019, her first novel, Sown Fields Shine When It’s Cloudy, was published under Metrópolis label.
Currently, she is writing her debut feature, a storybook, teaching at university, directing a research project on documentary films made by women based at Universidad del Cine and creating alliances with women around the world.
Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1994, Bárbara lives and works in Johannesburg. She graduated as an Economist from the Universidad de Buenos Aires and specialized in the cultural field. She wrote for Revista Chocha (2014-2018), studied theater with Mauricio Kartun and Pompeyo Audivert, and journalism with María Moreno (Página 12) and Cristian Alarcón (Revista Anfibia).
In 2018, she moved to South Africa to work at the Embassy of Argentina where she worked on the creation of cultural ties between Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa. She coordinated several projects, among them the participation of the writer Mariana Enriquez (Herralde Award) in the Cape Town book fair (Open Book Festival), the exploratory missions to South Africa of arteBA and the Argentine Chamber of Contemporary Art Galleries (MERIDIANO), cooperation activities on human rights with South African institutions such as the Mayibuye Archives and the University of Western Cape, as well as various Argentine musical participations in festivals in Sub-Saharan Africa – from jazz groups to electronic folk. Currently, she continues to work on the creation of cultural bridges between South Africa and Latin America as Project Manager Latin America at the Joburg Contemporary Art Foundation, a contemporary art foundation in Johannesburg focused on research, technology and art within the Global South.
