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 18.

We’re thrilled to spotlight our 2022 judges Annelise Finegan, Soeun Seo, and Emily Jungmin Yoon! Find out more about them below:

Annelise Finegan’s translations from Chinese include novels, short fiction, and non-fiction by contemporary and historical authors. She is a clinical assistant professor of translation and directs the graduate program in translation and interpreting at the NYU School of Professional Studies Center for Applied Liberal Arts. She currently serves as co-chair of the PEN Translation Committee. Annelise has worked for academic and textbook publishers as an acquisitions editor, publishing coordinator, bilingual copy editor, and project manager. She earned her PhD in Comparative Literature at Washington University in St. Louis, where she also completed a Graduate Certificate in Translation Studies.

Soeun Seo (she/they) is a poet and translator from South Korea and a recent graduate of the Michener Center for Writers. Their poems and translations have appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Korean Literature Now, Guernica, Black Warrior Review, etc. They co-translated Hysteria by Kim Yideum, which won the Lucien Stryk Award and the National Translation Award. Their latest translation, Beautiful and Useless by Kim Min Jeong, co-translated with Jake Levine, was published with Black Ocean.

Emily Jungmin Yoon is the author of A Cruelty Special to Our Species (Ecco, 2018), winner of the 2019 Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award and finalist for the 2020 Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and Ordinary Misfortunes (Tupelo Press, 2017), winner of the Sunken Garden Chapbook Prize. She has also translated and edited a chapbook of poems, Against Healing: Nine Korean Poets (Tilted Axis, 2019). She is the Poetry Editor for The Margins, the literary magazine of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, and a PhD candidate in Korean literature at the University of Chicago.

Translators and publishers, don’t forget to submit to the 2022 Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize by April 18!