Meet the 2026 ALTA Mentees
The American Literary Translators Association is delighted to introduce you to the 2026 ALTA Emerging Translator Mentorship Program mentees!
There are 14 mentees taking part in 13 mentorships in 2026:
- Akshata Nair & Prutha Honrao: Marathi, with mentor Sachin Ketkar
- Allie Xiang: Poetry from Hong Kong, with mentor Jennifer Feeley
- Emmy Elvira Wassén: Swedish, with mentor Rachel Willson-Broyles
- Grace En-Yi Ting: Literature from Taiwan, with mentor Lin King
- Konami Charlton: Japanese, with mentor Takami Nieda
- Lisa Kim: Korean Prose, with mentor Janet Hong
- Lucille Lorenz: Polish, with mentor Bill Johnston
- Priscilla Jolly: Malayalam, with mentor Jayasree Kalathil
- Riya Parikh: Children’s Literature from a South Asian Language, with mentor Lawrence Schimel
- Snehajaya Karanth: Kannada, with mentor Deepa Bhasthi
- Sooj Heo: Korean Poetry, with mentor Jack Jung
- Thalatha Gunasekara: Sinhala, with mentor Liyanage Amarakeerthi
- Xingying Peng: Prose from Hong Kong, with mentor Jacqueline Leung
The mentorship program allows an emerging translator to establish and develop a close working relationship with an experienced translator on a literary translation project chosen by the emerging translator.
The mentorships are offered by ALTA in partnership with the Literature Translation Institute of Korea, the Polish Cultural Institute New York, the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Global, the South Asian Literature in Translation (SALT) Project, the Swedish Arts Council, the Taiwan Academy of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Los Angeles, and the Yanai Initiative.