Fatima Kovács is a Hungarian writer and translator whose work braids folklore, botany, and the uncanny. Born in 1986 in Szombathely and raised near the Őrség National Park, she studied comparative literature and ethnobotany at Eötvös Loránd University, later completing a residency at the Balaton House of Writers. Her fiction has appeared in Central European journals, and her earlier books include the story collection Salt for Sleep and the novel Paper Orchard. She has received the Danube Emerging Writer Prize and a Kis Duna translation grant.
Fatima Kovács translates from Croatian and Polish, and has brought contemporary eco-fiction into Hungarian. She teaches narrative craft at a community arts center in Pécs and tends a small herb garden on a south-facing balcony, where she grows fennel, rue, and thyme. When not writing, she travels along the old postal roads of Transdanubia, collecting place names and market recipes that seed her fiction. She lives in Pécs with a watchmaker and a one-eyed cat named Sütőtök.
