English PEN’s International Translation Day programme returns with an evening of conversations between translators and their allies, in which three translators speak to figures from bookselling, publishing, and online influence, asking what we need from each other in the coming years.
ITD 2026 is hosted in person at Brixton Library, London, on Wednesday 30 September, made possible by the generous support of the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS).
You can also join us for a series of workshops online, and in-person in London and Norwich, throughout September as part of our programming for ITD 2026.
Part 1
In the first of three conversations, translator Sawad Hussain and bookseller Alison Henry discuss what they see as the biggest successes and positive shifts in the sector in recent years, and what has driven them. They’ll ask: how have developments in literary translation changed the way booksellers buy and sell books? How have transformations in the way books are promoted and consumed impacted what and how translators translate? And what would translators and booksellers need to do over the coming years to create sustainable growth in sales of literary translation?
Part 2
Next, translator Daniel Hahn and Kishani Widyaratna, Publishing Director at 4th Estate, will consider what it means to translate, what it means to publish in translation, and why it matters in our increasingly fragile and atomised world. They’ll ask: what do they respectively look for when they take on a book? How much is this about looking backwards into the market and how much is it about making the future market? Who is taking the biggest risks, and what is at stake beyond the money? And how can publishers and translators work together to make a more expansive, more viable, more saleable industry landscape?
Part 3
The final conversation will see translator Annie McDermott speak to bookseller and host of the It’s Lit in Translation podcast Evelyn Heis, discussing the relationships between translators and readers, and how literature in translation is shaped by different forms of marketing and influence. They will ask: how does the appetite for reading literature relate to the appetite for reading literature in translation? Who is influencing what readers read, bookshops sell, publishers acquire, and translators translate? What do we lose and what do we gain in the quest for virality, algorithm-friendly content, and ‘overnight’ hits? And what do readers who have grown up online need from the sector?
All three conversations will be chaired by translator and English PEN’s Translation Advisory Co-Chair, Nichola Smalley. The event will end with all the speakers returning to the stage to take questions from the audience, followed by a networking reception.
This event is part of English PEN’s month-long programme of events of International Translation Day 2026. See the full programme here.