The Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize, which was inaugurated in 2009, recognizes the importance of Asian translation for international literature and promotes the translation of Asian poetry into English. Stryk was an internationally acclaimed translator of Japanese and Chinese Zen poetry, renowned Zen poet himself, and former professor of English at Northern Illinois University. Both translators and publishers are invited to submit titles, and submissions are open this year until April 19.

We’re thrilled to spotlight our 2021 judges Jeffrey Angles, Maithreyi Karnoor, and Rajiv Mohabir! Find out more about them below:

Jeffrey Angles is a poet, translator, and professor of Japanese literature at Western Michigan University. His collection of original Japanese-language poetry won the Yomiuri Prize for Literature, a rare honor accorded only a few non-native speakers since the award began in 1949. He has translated dozens of translations of Japan’s most important modern authors and poets into English; he believes strongly in the role of translators as activists and has focused on translating socially engaged, feminist, and queer writers. Among his recent translations is Orikuchi Shinobu’s modernist classic, The Book of the Dead, which won the Miyoshi Prize and the MLA’s Scaglione Prize.

Maithreyi Karnoor is the author of the novel Sylvia: Distant Avuncular Ends. She is a Kannada-English translator and poet. She is the winner of Kuvempu Bhasha Bharati award for translation. She was shortlisted for the Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize, and twice for the Montreal International Poetry Prize. Her essays reviews and translations are published widely in India.

Rajiv Mohabir is the translator of I Even Regret Night: Holi Songs of Demerara (1916) (Kaya Press 2019) which received a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant Award and the 2020 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets. His third poetry collection Cutlish (Four Way Books) and his memoir Antiman (Restless Books) are both forthcoming in 2021. Currently he is an Assistant Professor of poetry in the MFA program at Emerson College, translations editor at Waxwing Journal.