English PEN and British Council announces inaugural PEN Presents winners

• Six translators representing four of the languages of India have been selected for PEN Presents, the new award for sample translations.

• The first issue of PEN Presents is a partnership between English PEN and the British Council, as part of India/UK Together, a Season of Culture.

The translators are:

• Deepa Bhasthi, for a translation from Kannada of Banu Mushtaq’s Haseena and Other Stories.
• Gopika Jadeja, for a translation from Gujarati of Umesh Solanki’s Transformations.
• Kartikeya Jain, for a translation from Hindi of Chandan Pandey’s Songs of Glory.
• Shabnam Nadiya, for a translation from Bengali of Wasi Ahmed’s The Ice Machine.
• Nikhil Pandhi, for a translation from Hindi of Anita Bharti’s Chronicle of the Quota Woman and Other Stories.
• V. Ramaswamy, for a translation from Bengali of Adhir Biswas’ Last Boy: An Untouchable Boy’s Classroom.

The six winners were chosen from a shortlist of 12 translators, who were awarded grants to create samples of their proposed works. The samples have received editorial support from English PEN and are available to read on the PEN Presents platform, which will be developed as an online catalogue of the most outstanding, original, and bibliodiverse literature not yet published in English translation.

The first round of PEN Presents is a partnership between English PEN and the British Council, as part of the British Council’s India/UK Together Season of Culture which will see a vast programme of creative collaboration, education and cultural exchange including key projects focusing on building stronger connections between India and the UK’s literary and publishing sectors.

Jonathan Kennedy, Director Arts India, British Council, said: Through our work in literature and publishing, we are creating more platforms and opportunities for outstanding Indian writers and literary professionals to take the best of Indian-language literature to global audiences in new translations into English. The India/UK Together Season of Culture has literature, publishing, and translation as key elements of the collaborations between India and UK with emerging and established creative professionals. We are delighted at the line-up of the inaugural PEN Presents winners and are excited at the prospect of some great Indian voices writing in Kannada, Hindi, Bengali and Gujarati being read by English-language audiences for the first time.