This week, organizers announced the first ever Warwick Prize for Women in Translation — although it was, I think, supposed to get its big reveal today:
In any case, the debut Warwick will be awarded this November “to the best eligible work of fiction, poetry, literary non-fiction or work of fiction for children or young adults written by a woman and translated into English by a female or male translator,” according to organizers.
The £1,000 prize will be divided between the writer and translator or translators, with each contributor receiving an equal share.
The prize is, unfortunately, only for books published in the UK, which means Trumplandia will have to start their own prize. From the new prize website:
The prize aims to address the gender imbalance in translated literature and to increase the number of international women’s voices accessible by a British and Irish readership. A recent report by Nielsen Book showed that translated literary fiction makes up only 3.5% of the literary fiction titles published in the UK, but accounts for 7% of the volume of sales. If translated literature as a whole is underrepresented on the British book market, then women’s voices in translation are even more peripheral. The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, for example, was awarded 21 times, but was won by a woman only twice.
In the words of Maureen Freely, current President of English PEN and Head of English and Comparative Literary Studies at Warwick: “We’ve come a long way with the championing of world literature over the past decade, welcoming in a multiplicity of voices which have gone on to enrich us all. In the same period, however, we’ve noticed that it is markedly more difficult for women to make it into English translation. This prize offers us an opportunity to welcome in the voices and perspectives we’ve missed thus far.”
The judging panel for this year will be made up of a team of three, one of whom will be appointed chair. The three judges this year: Amanda Hopkinson, Boyd Tonkin, and Susan Bassnett.
Submissions open on April 3 of this year, and guidelines and an entry form can be found on the prize website. The entry form must be submitted not by the translator or author, but by the UK or Irish publisher of the translation. They also ask for five hard copies of the translation and one hard copy of the original. Entries will close on July 3.
Any queries, according to the website, can be addressed to womenintranslation@warwick.ac.uk.
