2015 PEN/Heim Translation Series
PEN American Center is excited to showcase the diverse projects awarded grants this year from the PEN/Heim Translation Fund. Each week through December, we’ll be featuring excerpts from each project and essays by the translators about what originally drew them to their projects and why these projects feel relevant now. The Fund, which awards grants of $2,000 to $4,000 to promote the publication and reception of translated world literature in English, received a record 226 applications this year spanning a wide array of languages of origin, including Mongolian, Icelandic, Czech, Hebrew, Portuguese, Japanese, and Awadhi/Bhojpuri Hindi.
Since 2009, the Fund’s annual contribution for grant awards has been augmented by support from Amazon.
Fouling One’s Own Nest: On Translating Horacio Castellanos Moya
But Horacio Castellanos Moya and Thomas Bernhard pretty much flip their native countries the bird; not because they’re elitist, but because they’re raging idealists and lovers of the arts. More
Revulsion: Thomas Bernhard in San Salvador
Lee Klein is the recipient of a 2015 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant for his translation of what Roberto Bolaño called Moya's best work. Moya invokes Bernhard's most characteristic mode:… More
Capturing the Hurt: On Translating Kazuki Kaneshiro
Kazuki Kaneshiro has resisted the category of “Zainichi writer” in Japan, and insists that his ethnic Korean heritage is but a small, and not defining, part of his identity. More
Understanding Difference: On Translating Olga Tokarczuk
The urgency of the issues addressed in Tokarczuk's work is nowhere clearer than in the recent barrage of hate mail addressed to the author, absolutely unprecedented in her career,… More
The Books of Jacob
Jennifer Croft is the recipient of a 2015 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant for The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk, which was awarded the 2015 Nike Literature Award, Poland's… More
The Absolute Gravedigger
Published in 1937, The Absolute Gravedigger is the culmination of Vítězslav Nezval’s work as the leading poet of Czech surrealism. More
The Unimaginable Muse: On Translating Vítězslav Nezval
One of the most prolific poets of his generation, Vítězslav Nezval dazzled even his closest contemporaries with his linguistic facility and uncanny ingenuity. More
The Truffle Eye
Shadows rest on these benches / and you weep lion tears / and bite me with literary envy, / you bite down hard on my back More
The Gleaner Song
In pieces selected by the poet and translator from thirty years of published work, both East and West have been engaged, creating a landscape of the poet's extensive travels. More
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