Submissions are now open for Deep Vellum’s The Best Literary Translations 2025 Anthology. If you are a translator who published during 2023, please consider applying. The deadline is January 5, 2024 and early submissions are encouraged!

In 2013, Will Evans opened Deep Vellum, a nonprofit organization in Dallas with the goal of publishing the world’s best and most diverse literature from around the world and to create a community space for all things literary. In the first 5 years, Deep Vellum had already published 90 works in translation.

Formally endorsed by American Literary Translators Association (ALTA), BLT is a new and exciting project that aims to showcase the best of literary translations into English from around the world, annually in book format. It is co-edited by Noh Anothai, Öykü Tekten, Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún, and Wendy Call. The inaugural volume Best Literary Translations 2024, guest edited by Jane Hirshfield, is coming out this April.

The second edition of this exciting annual anthology will showcase literary translators’ work to make possible literary encounters from around the world for the English-language reader. The 2025 edition will be guest edited by poet, novelist, essayist and translator Cristina Rivera Garza. This anthology will help redefine the canon of world literature and challenge the perception that only Anglophone literature matters in the cultural conversation.

Submission Guidelines:

  • You can submit works of poetry, short fiction, literary essays, and hybrid-genre texts, translated into English from any language(s) and published online or in print in a US or US-affiliated literary journal or magazine during 2023.
  • Journals and magazines are invited to nominate for consideration up to seven pieces that they have published in this time frame while individual translators may nominate up to two of their own pieces published in the same period.
  • Prose submissions are limited to 5,000 words. Drama, graphic, and illustrated works are not eligible.
  • Acceptable file formats are .DOC, .DOCX, or .RTF.
  • Unpublished or self-published translations, translations that have appeared only in book form, and translations published outside the US or US-affiliated publications are ineligible.
  • Deep Vellum has a broad definition of “translation” and admire both “traditional” translations (those rendered so seamlessly into English that they seem to have been first written in it) but also more conceptual or experimental approaches to translation, especially where they reveal the often fraught and complex relationships between languages and cultures.
  • Translations into English from underrepresented languages are welcomed, as well as work by women, LGBTQIA+, and BIPOC translators, as well as from literatures that represent languages, cultures, and communities that have been minoritized.
  • Translators will need to confirm that they have permission from the author or their estate (or that it is in the public domain) to publish the submission, should it be chosen, in this anthology.
  • Please make your nominations through Submittable and complete the questionnaire (Google Form) that is a required part of your submission. Both are important to completing your application.

The four co-editors will carefully consider all submissions, creating a longlist, which will then be given to Guest Editor Cristina Rivera Garza, who will make final selections for the second edition. Final selections will be made in April 2024, and selected translators will be notified shortly thereafter.

Each translator will receive an honorarium of $150 and one copy of the anthology from Deep Vellum. Original authors will not be compensated, as this anthology is intended to celebrate the art of translation and originals will not be published.

Publication of the anthology is tentatively scheduled for April 2025.

Deadline: January 5, 2024

Submit here.

Good luck to all applicants!