PEN Presents

PEN Presents supports and showcases sample translations, funding the often-unpaid work of creating samples, giving UK publishers access to titles from underrepresented languages and regions, and helping diversify the translated literature landscape. 

The latest round of PEN Presents is a partnership between English PEN and the Booker Prize Foundation, the home of the International Booker Prize, which each year rewards the best work of fiction translated into English from any language and published in the UK and/or Ireland.  

PEN Presents x International Booker Prize supported translators from the Global Majority. Since 2016, submissions to the International Booker Prize and to English PEN’s PEN Translates programme have told the same story: while the representation of authors of the Global Majority is increasing, translators from the Global Majority remain chronically underrepresented. The PEN Presents x International Booker Prize project aims to address this, working to fund and promote the work of Global Majority translators so that more literature in translation, created by more people, reaches English-language readers. People from the Global Majority currently represent approximately 80% of the world’s population 

Translators from the Global Majority based anywhere in the world were invited to submit proposals to create sample translations of previously untranslated works of long-form fiction or collections of short stories by any author, from any language and region, and of any style, genre and era.

A shortlist of 12 applicants will receive grants of £500 to create 5,000-word sample translations of their proposed works, with a final selection of six samples selected as PEN Presents winners, given editorial support from English PEN, and promoted to English PEN’s network of UK publishers.