English PEN’s PEN Presents initiative seeks to help UK publishers to discover – and publish – the most exciting books from around the world, and to support literary translators in their development as advocates for international literature.
Our Translation Pitch event on 8 June 2017 brought together all six shortlisted translators from our PEN Presents… East and Southeast Asia project: Sophie Bowman, Natascha Bruce, Pingta Ku, Laurel Taylor, Tiffany Tsao and Jason Woodruff. Each translator read a sample translation from a book they passionately believe should be read by English-language audiences. Panellists Ka Bradley (Granta), Euan Monaghan (Editor, Structo Press) and Deborah Smith (Translator & Founder, Tilted Axis Press) heard the ‘pitches’, questioned the translator-advocates… and then selected a winner.
You can hear each of the translators reading their work, and find out who was declared winner of the Translation Pitch, by listening to a recording of the event via the player below, or on SoundCloud.