Hard Rain

Irma Venter is a journalist and thriller writer. She loves traveling, Labradors, good coffee, excellent whiskey, and expensive chocolate-and not necessarily in that order. She writes books about strong women, interesting men, and that fascinating space between right and wrong. She lives in South Africa.

Elsa Silke grew up in Simondium, a village near Paarl in the Western Cape province of South Africa. She studied for a BA at the University of Stellenbosch, majoring in English and French. She later returned to the University of Stellenbosch for an honors degree in English and in 2004 was awarded a master's degree in translation. Since then she has been working as a freelance editor and translator, chiefly of literary texts. She is a four-time winner of a South African Translators' Institute prize for outstanding translation, each time in a different category or language combination: the fiction category in 2006 for Karel Schoeman's This Life; the nonfiction category in 2009 for Chris Karsten's Charlize: Life's One Helluva Ride; the children's literature category in 2012 for Linda Rode's In the Never-Ever Wood; and the fiction category in 2015 for Paula Marais's Shadow Self. She has two sons, a daughter, and five grandchildren, and she and her husband live in the Strand.