This year, as a contribution to Women in Translation Month, created by Meytal Radzinski in 2014, the PEN America Translation Committee has run a series of blog posts featuring books written by women that have won the PEN Translation Prize and the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, as well as books by female authors published after having received a PEN/Heim Translation Fund grant.
In the final two posts of the series, we have expanded the concept to feature the books translated by women that have won the PEN Translation Prize and (in today’s post) the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. Both awards were established in order to honor the art of the literary translator and are accompanied by a $3,000 prize.
Click here to read how Women in Translation Month came into being and a look at efforts aimed to get more female authors translated into English and more people reading them. If you’re on Twitter, follow the conversation at #womenintranslation and #WITMonth. Also, visit Women in Translation (WiT), a Tumblr I cofounded with Alta L. Price, which draws its inspiration from VIDA: Women in Literary Arts and investigates gender disparities in the world of literary translation.
PEN Award for Poetry in Translation Winners
First awarded in 1996, the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation recognizes the best book-length translation of poetry into English. Of the 23 winning translators, 11—almost half—have been women, and a quick look at their names shows that many are accomplished poets in their own right.
The following is a list of the award-winning women, along with the title of the book they translated and its author. We hope you’ll be inspired to pick some of them up and read them—and keep on reading women in translation (writers and translators) in all the months to come!
2016: Sawako Nakayasu, for her translation from the Japanese of The Collected Poems of Chika Sagawa Amazon | Indiebound
2015: Eliza Griswold, for her translation from the Pashto of I Am the Beggar of the World: Landays from Contemporary Afghanistan Amazon | Indiebound
2014: Karen Emmerich and Edmund Keeley, for their translation from the Greek of Diaries of Exile by Yannis Ritsos Amazon | Indiebound
2013: Molly Weigel, for her translation from the Spanish of The Shock of the Lenders and Other Poems by Jorge Santiago Perednik Amazon | Indiebound
2012: Jen Hofer, for her translation from the Spanish of Negro Marfil/Ivory Black by Myriam Moscona Amazon | Indiebound
2010: Anne Carson, for her translation from the Greek of An Oresteia: Agamemnon by Aiskhylos; Elektra by Sophokles; Orestes by Euripides Amazon | Indiebound
2009: Marilyn Hacker, for her translation from the French of King of a Hundred Horsemen by Marie Étienne Amazon | Indiebound
2008: Rosmarie Waldrop, for her translation from the German of Lingos I-IX by Ulf Stolterfoht Amazon
2002: Anne Twitty, for her translation from the Spanish of Islandia by María Negroni Amazon | Indiebound
2001: Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld, for their translation from the Hebrew of Open Closed Open by Yehuda Amichai Amazon | Indiebound