L to R: Mayada Ibrahim, Rachel Landau, Ye Odelia Lu, Dawid Mobolaji, Allana Noyes]
September 7, 2023—The American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) is delighted to announce the 2023 ALTA Travel Fellows! Each year, between four and six $1,000 Travel Fellowships are awarded to emerging (unpublished or minimally published) translators to help them pay for hotel and travel expenses to the annual ALTA conference. 2023 marks the eighth year of the Peter K. Jansen Memorial Travel Fellowship, preferentially awarded to an emerging translator of color or a translator working from an underrepresented diaspora or stateless language.
This year’s winners were selected by judges Lizzie Davis, Michelle Gil-Montero, and Canaan Morse. The 2023 ALTA Travel Fellowships are made possible thanks to the generous support of ALTA’s Past Presidents Council, the Peter K. Jansen Memorial Travel Fund, and numerous individual donors, including translators and other devoted supporters of the craft and art of literary translation.
ALTA will celebrate this year’s Travel Fellows with a reading at ALTA’s annual conference, ALTA46: The Place of Translation, ALTA’s first fully in-person conference since 2019. The ALTA46 conference will take place from November 8-11 in Tucson, AZ.
Congratulations to these exceptional emerging translators, chosen from among many applicants!
Mayada Ibrahim, 2023 Peter K. Jansen Memorial Travel Fellow (Arabic)
Mayada Ibrahim is a translator, editor, and writer based in Queens, New York, with roots in Khartoum and London. She works in Arabic and English. Her translations have been published by Archipelago Books, Circumference, Banipal, and Willows House. She participated as a judge in PEN America’s Literary Translation Prize 2022. Learn more about Mayada here.
Rachel Landau, 2023 Travel Fellow (Russian)
Rachel Landau is a poet and translator from Boston, Massachusetts. She is an assistant poetry editor at Asymptote Journal, and she has received support from the Bread Loaf Translators’ Conference. Currently, Rachel is a PhD student in Slavic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. Learn more about Rachel here.
Ye Odelia Lu, 2023 Travel Fellow (Mandarin/Taiwanese Mandarin)
Ye Odelia Lu is an essayist and translator with an MFA degree from Columbia University. Her work has appeared in Sine Theta Magazine, Columbia Journal, The Margins, and Epiphany Magazine. Lu will be teaching at Duke Kunshan University and Wellesley College next year. She enjoys cooking and gaming in her free time. Learn more about Odelia here.
Dawid Mobolaji, 2023 Travel Fellow (Polish)
Dawid Mobolaji is a Polish-Nigerian literary translator, writer and medical doctor based in London. Born and raised in West Pomerania, he works between English and his native Polish. He recently took part in the Emerging Translator Mentorship Programme at the National Centre for Writing in Norwich, UK. Learn more about Dawid here.
Allana Noyes, 2023 Travel Fellow (Spanish)
Allana Noyes is a literary translator from Reno, Nevada. She holds an MFA from the University of Iowa and won the 2018 World Literature Today Student Translation Prize in poetry. She has received fellowships from the Fulbright Program, the Banff International Literary Translation Centre, and the Bread Loaf Translator’s Conference. She can be found at allananoyes.com. Learn more about Allana here.
The following applicants are honorably mentioned as this year’s Travel Fellowship finalists:
Hazel Evans
Bella Hubble
Addie Leak
Cynthia Shin
Tricia Viveros
Congratulations to this year’s Travel Fellows!