The Best Literary Translations 2025: Call for Submissions

Deep Vellum is accepting nominations for the second edition of an exciting new anthology initiative: The Best Literary Translations 2025. We are honored to showcase literary translators’ work to make possible literary encounters from around the world for the English-language reader. This anthology will be an annual edition; the first edition is coming out in April 2024 from Deep Vellum.

The Best Literary Translations (BLT) has arisen out of a tangible public demand for inclusive and transparent cultural conversations. The past couple of years have brought an urgent emphasis on listening to underheard voices from cultures around the world, acknowledging who speaks and how, and naming the people who make our global literary conversations possible. BLT offers some of the best of global literature in English-language translation, presenting an opportunity to expand the audience for world literature. It will deepen public knowledge and understanding of the translation process and give translators working today the recognition they deserve. This anthology will help redefine the canon of world literatures. 

For this anthology, we seek 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 the calendar year 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.

We are grateful to all literary journals and magazines that nominate translations.

Unpublished or self-published translations, translations that have appeared only in book form, and translations published outside the US or US-affiliated publications are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. (Please see FAQ #11, linked below.)

We have 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.

We especially welcome translations into English from underrepresented languages, literature by women, LGBTQIA+, and BIPOC translators, as well as from literatures that represent languages, cultures, and communities that have been minoritized.

Please make your nominations through Submittable. Our Submittable page will also ask you to complete a questionnaire (Google form) that is a required part of your submission. (Thanks for your patience with this two-part process.) Both are important to completing your application. Thank you for your interest in and support for the Best Literary Translations 2025. 

Please see here for complete guidelines and FAQ. 

If you have any questions about this project or the submission process after reading the complete guidelines and FAQ, please email us: besttranslations@deepvellum.org