Congratulations to Peirene Press and Martha Stevns for launching a new prize for fiction in translation. The prize is open to unpublished translators, and the winner will receive £3500 and a writer’s retreat in the Pyrenees. The focus of the first year’s prize will be the novel Neve, Cane, Piede by Claudio Morandini, already a bestseller in Italy but not yet translated into English. The winning translation will be publication in full by Peirene. The judges for the first year’s prize are the novelist Amanda Craig, the editor and translator Gesche Ipsen, and Peirene’s founder and publisher Meike Ziervogel.

Translation has never been more important: today’s climate of nationalism and closing borders makes it vital that we see beyond our parochial concerns, learn how people live elsewhere, and perceive the world through the lens of other cultures. It is also wonderful that the prize will enable a new generation of translators to continue the work of the late and sadly missed Anthea Bell in making the rich literatures of other countries accessible to Anglophone readers.

The winner will be announced on the 1st of March, and the residency will take place between the 18th May and the 20th July 2019.