Huge if belated congratulations to all my fellow winners of 2013 English PEN grants! Sixteen projects (books + publishers) were selected for funding via the PEN Translates! program, which
awards grants to UK publishers for translation costs and is supported by Arts Council England. English PEN accepts submissions of fiction (including children’s literature), non-fiction, poetry, prose or plays (for print edition), but not magazines, in all languages. The main criteria for assessment are literary quality, strength of the publishing project and making a contribution to literary diversity. Titles are selected from a long list assessed and reviewed by an expert panel chaired by English PEN trustee and professional translator, Ros Schwartz.
I’ll be working with Tartarus Press on one of my dream projects: editing and translating an anthology of French and Belgian fantastical tales from 1940 to the present, tentatively entitled I Do Not Write to be Believed.
The PEN Translates! grants cover an impressive range of languages, with French coming in first at 4 books, followed by Spanish with 3, and Chinese and German with 2 each. Other languages represented include Occitan, Polish, Farsi, Portuguese, and Hebrew. I’m also proud to report that indie publishers scooped both grants and in the prize category for the PEN Promotes! program.
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