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Hana Murrell

I started my career in translation rights at Andrew Nurnberg Associates in 2014, and arrived at Hardman & Swainson from Blake Friedmann where I was Senior Rights Manager, via maternity covers at Curtis Brown and A. M. Heath.

I have a degree in Modern and Medieval Languages – French and Italian, from Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and also spent one year at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan, studying Japanese. Selling translation rights combines my passion for books with my love of engaging with other cultures and meeting people from around the world. It also enables me to attend international book fairs and make trips to visit publishers in their offices.

What I'm looking for

I’m keen to build a small, curated list of clients with whom I can collaborate alongside my translation rights work.

In my spare time I’m an enthusiastic home cook and baker, and enjoy eating my way around London, so I would love to work with food writers and cooks who have started building a platform and are keen to see their words and recipes in print. Having Japanese roots myself, I have a soft spot for Asian cuisine, patisserie and third culture cooking. My favourite writers/cookbook authors include Gurd Loyal, Letitia Clark, Samin Nosrat, Bee Wilson, Emiko Davies, Tim Anderson, Ravneet Gill and Nik Sharma.

I would also aim to use my insights into international book market trends to find non-fiction books with great translation rights potential – mainly in the areas of practical self-help, popular psychology and dating and communication, i.e. from the next James Clear, Nedra Glover Tawwab, Philippa Perry, Jefferson Fisher or Damona Hoffman.

On the fiction side I would be delighted to find upmarket or literary fiction with a compelling plot and a flair for language – books which make you feel deeply for the characters, and which explore love in all its complexity or offer a piercing commentary on societal issues.

I would devour another multi-generational epic novel such as Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko, and I also appreciate sharp observations about the clash between cultures, which Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie masters so deftly in Americanah. I fall hard for bittersweet love stories like Tomasz Jedrowski’s Swimming in the Dark, or the completely absorbing love dilemma of a book such as The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller.

I read French and Italian fluently and would be open to working with authors who have been successful in those markets already, and who would like to find a UK or other international home. In general I’m interested in the work of authors from diverse cultures, and I have a particular personal fondness for books set in or about Japan or the Far East.