Record-breaking year for Women in Translation award longlist

Indie publishers have dominated a record-breaking longlist for the third annual Warwick Prize for Women in Translation.

And Other Stories, Seagull Books and Fitzcarraldo Editions each had two titles longlisted, while Pereine, Europa Editions and poetry publisher Bloodaxe Books have also been recognised. The 2019 prize sees judges Amanda Hopkinson, Boyd Tonkin and Susan Bassnett return to the panel.

The £1,000 prize, which aims to address gender imbalance in translated literature, saw eligible entries almost double this year with 92 entrants in 30 different languages. The 13 longlisted titles contain works translated from Farsi, Catalan and Lithuanian. The University of Warwick credits the rise in entrants in part to author Kamila Shamsie’s call in 2015 for presses to publish only women authors.

Prize coordinator Dr Chantal Wright said: “The substantial increase in the number of entries received for this year’s competition shows that the publishing industry is gradually beginning to respond to initiatives such as the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, which is part of a much wider activist movement driven by a commitment from individuals such as Meytal Radzinski, who started Women in Translation Month (#WITMonth), and from independent publishers such as And Other Stories, who boldly took up Kamila Shamsie’s call to make 2018 a Year of Publishing Women. The work of the literary translation community in the UK and Ireland is vital to the cause of women in translation, and to the visibility of international literature in these insular times.”

Among the longlistees are Olga Tokarczuk, whose Man Booker prizewinning novel Flights (Fitzcarraldo Editions) received a special mention in last year’s competition. Tokarczuk is on the longlist with literary crime novel Drive Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead (Fitzcarraldo Editions) , translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones who reappears on the longlist for a third year running. The 2018 prize was taken novel Belladonna (Maclehose Press), written by the late Daša Drndić and translated from Croatian by Celia Hawkesworth.

2019's longlist in full:

Brother In Ice by Alicia Kopf, translated from Catalan by Mara Faye Lethem (And Other Stories, 2018)

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata, translated from Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori (Granta, 2018)

Disoriental by Négar Djavadi, translated from French by Tina Kover (Europa Editions, 2018)

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tocarczuk, translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2018)

Katalin Street by Magda Szabó, translated from Hungarian by Len Rix (Maclehose Press, 2019)

Negative of a Group Photograph by Azita Ghahreman, translated from Farsi by Maura Dooley with Elhum Shakerifar (Bloodaxe, 2018)

People in the Room by Norah Lange, translated from Spanish by Charlotte Whittle (And Other Stories, 2018)

Picnic in the Storm by Yukiko Motoya, translated from Japanese by Asa Yoneda (Little, Brown Book Group (Corsair), 2018)

Season of the Shadow by Léonora Miano, translated from French by Gila Walker (Seagull Books, 2018)  

Shadows on the Tundra by Dalia Grinkevičiūtė, translated from Lithuanian by Delija Valiukenas (Peirene, 2018)

The Years by Annie Ernaux, translated from French by Alison L. Strayer (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2018)

Thick of It by Ulrike Almut Sandig, translated from German by Karen Leeder (Seagull Books, 2018)

Zuleikha by Guzel Yakhina, translated from Russian by Lisa C. Hayden (Oneworld, 2019)