Writing Competition: PEN/Heim Translation Fund

The PEN/Heim Translation Fund was established in the summer of 2003 by an endowed gift of $730,000 from Michael Henry Heim and Pricilla Heim, in response to the dismayingly low number of literary translations currently appearing in English. Its purpose is to promote the publication and reception of translated international literature in English.

Thanks to the generosity of Michael Henry Heim and Pricilla Heim’s endowment, PEN America has awarded grants to almost 200 winning projects. The Fund has been uniquely successful in finding publishers for major international works, encouraging younger translators to enter the field, and introducing English-speaking readers to new and exciting voices. All other criteria being equal, preference is given to translators at the beginning of their career, and to works by underrepresented writers working in underrepresented languages.

Over the 16 years of its existence, the Fund has given grants of $2,000–$4,000 to nearly 200 translations from over 35 languages, including Armenian, Basque, Estonian, Farsi, Finland-Swedish, Lithuanian and Mongolian, as well as French, Spanish, German, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, and Arabic. Among the 108 projects awarded grants in the Fund’s first 13 years of operation (2004–2016), 91 (nearly 70 percent) have thus far been published or are forthcoming from a publisher. Many of those books found their publishers as a result of being awarded a grant by the Fund. In addition to being excerpted and favorably reviewed in a host of magazines including The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Granta, The Paris Review, Words Without Borders, The Literary Review, Mandorla, and many others, about 20 percent of the published PEN/Heim Translation Fund projects have won or been shortlisted for major literary awards.

Applications for the 2025 cycle will be open June 1 – August 1, 2024.

All documents should be in 12pt, Times New Roman, single spaced, and with 1 inch margins.

The online submission form requires the following:

• A 1-2 page statement outlining the work and describing its importance.

• A biography and bibliography of the author, including information on translations of their work into other languages.

• A CV of the translator, no longer than 3 pages.

• If the book is not in the public domain and the project is not yet under contract, please include a photocopy of the copyright notice on the original (the copyright notice is a line including the character ©, a date, and the name of the copyright holder, which appears as part of the front matter in every book), and a letter from the copyright holder stating that English-language rights to the book are available. A letter or copy of an email from the copyright holder is sufficient.

• If the translation is currently under contract with a publisher, please submit a copy of the contract.

• A translation sample is required. For prose, this should be within the range of 8-10 pages (when formatted as required, this will be approximately 3,000-5,000 words). For poetry, please include 1-2 poems per page, within an 8–10 page range.

• The same passage in the original language (and, if the work has been previously translated, the same passage in the earlier version). 

More information and submission link here.