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 works 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 16, 2018.
We’re thrilled to have Robert A. Hueckstedt, Sora Kim-Russell, and Juliet Winters Carpenter as this year’s Lucien Stryk judges! Find out more about them below:
Robert A. Hueckstedt translates from Hindi and Sanskrit. His most recent translation from the Hindi is a novella by Manohar Shyam Joshi, The Perplexity of Hariya Herclues. His translation from the Sanskrit, of Bāṇa’s Harṣacarita, is due out in Harvard University Press’s Murty Classical Library of India in 2018. He teaches at the University of Virginia.
Sora Kim-Russell is a literary translator based in Seoul. Her translations include The Hole by Hye-young Pyun, Princess Bari and Familiar Things by Hwang Sok-yong, I’ll Be Right There by Shin Kyung-sook, and the novella Nowhere to be Found by Bae Suah, which was nominated for the PEN Translation Prize and the Best Translated Book Award. Her translation of Hye-young’s Pyun’s “Caring for Plants” appeared in The New Yorker in July 2017. She is also a prose mentor for the 2017 ALTA Emerging Translator Mentorship program and a faculty member for the 2018 Bread Loaf Translators’ Conference.
Juliet Winters Carpenter, a prolific translator of Japanese literature, grew up in the American Midwest. A 1960 visit to Japan with her father sparked her lifelong interest in Japan. Her first translated book, Secret Rendezvous (Mikkai) by Abe Kobo, received the 1980 Japan-US Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature, and A True Novel, her translation of Minae Mizumura’s Honkaku shosetsu, received the same award in 2014. Current projects include an epic historical novel, a bilingual autobiographical novel, a romance novel, and short stories. She has lived in Japan since 1975 and in the coming year will wrap up a 32-year teaching career at Doshisha Women’s College in Kyoto.