Charco Press is an independent publisher based in Edinburgh that specialises in translating contemporary Latin American fiction into English.
Its professed aim is to introduce groundbreaking works of contemporary Latin American literature through carefully crafted translations to an audience that may be unfamiliar with its themes or narrative styles.
The name "Charco", meaning "puddle" or "pond" in Spanish, derives from a colloquial expression used in some Latin American countries to refer to the Atlantic Ocean.
[1] More specifically, the expression cruzar el charco ("to cross the pond") refers to the act of going overseas or travelling between continents, and may carry connotations of the migratory waves that moved to and from Latin America in different historical periods.
Thus, when she and McDowell started to develop their publishing project, they decided to seek out recent Latin American books of great impact and make them accessible to English-speaking readers.