This year’s PEN/Heim Translation Fund grant recipients were chosen from among a record-size pool of 272 applicants. These grants, made possible by a donation by legendary translator and translation advocate Michael Henry Heim, support translations-in-progress, often work by first-time or otherwise emerging translators and often lead to projects finding publishers. This year’s advisory board, including Alta Price, Elisabeth Jaquette, Jenny Wang Medina, Jeremy Tiang, Katie Dublinski, Lara Vergnaud, Natasha Wimmer, Peter Constantine, Tess Lewis, and Chair Samantha Schnee, selected 11 projects translated from ussian, Italian, Korean, French, Portuguese, Galician, Vietnamese, Bengali, and Spanish. Ten of this year’s grants are worth $3,481 each, while one, to the winner of the PEN Grant for the English Translation of Italian Literature (always given out at the same time), amounts to $5000. More than half of this year’s supported projects are for books by women authors, which I’m delighted to see.
Here’s the list:
Curtis Bauer’s translation from the Spanish of Home Reading Serviceby Fabio Morábito
Fiona Bell’s translation from the Russian of Storiesby Natalia Meshchaninova
Kevin Gerry Dunn’s translation from the Spanish of Easy Readingby Cristina García Morales
Dawn Fulton’s translation from the French of Cajouby Michèle Lacrosil
Anton Hur’s translation from the Korean of Cursed Bunnyby Bora Chung
Yarri Kamara’s translation from the French of So Distant From My Lifeby Monique Ilboudo
Johnny Lorenz’s translation from the Portuguese of Notebook of Returnby Edimilson de Almeida Pereira
Shabnam Nadiya’s translation from the Bengali of The Meat Market and Other Storiesby Mashiul Alam
Quyen Nguyen-Hoang’s translation from the Vietnamese of Chronicles of a Villageby Hien Thanh Nguyen
Jacob Rogers’ translation from the Galician of Extraordinaryby Antón Lopo
Minna Zallman Proctor’s translation from the Italian of The Renegade: Natalia Ginzburg, Her Life and Writingby Sandra Petrignani (PEN Grant for the English Translation of Italian Literature)
Congratulations to all this year’s grant winners! More information about the grants and the projects can be found on the PEN website.