Francisco Álvarez was born in Gijón in 1970, and is a journalist, literary translator and writer. His work includes the short story collection In Few Words (Trabe, 1998) and history book Course Through History: Legendary Ships of All Time (Seronda, 2011) and The Land of Freedom: Chronical of Human and Civil Rights (Seronda, 2012). He has translated from Italian into Spanish the novels Wolves Before the Sea by Carlo Mazza (Seronda, 2013), Memories of Emptiness by Marcello Fois (Hoja de Lata, 2014), which won the prize for the best Italian book published in Spain that year, Clash of Civilisations in a Lift in Piazza Vittoria by Amara Lakhous (Hoja de Lata, 2016), and Lineage by Marcello Fois (Hoja de Lata, 2016). August Rain, his first novel, won the Xosefa Xovellanos prize for novels, the most recognised award for Asturian literature.