The John Calder Translation Prize is an annual award for translations into English of full-length ambitious, groundbreaking works of literary merit and general interest. The winner is awarded £3,000 and a runner-up is awarded £1,000.
The aim of the John Calder Translation Prize is to celebrate new and ambitious translations into English of full-length works (fiction, non-fiction and poetry) which are distinguished by the highly personal and imaginative approach of the authors to their subject. Submissions can be from any language into English.
Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, John Calder was known as one of the pre-eminent English-language publishers of exciting, avant-garde literature, and was a trailblazing proponent of fiction in translation, as well as a champion of the free word and a staunch promoter of authors who were suppressed or discriminated for political or other reasons. Under his stewardship, his publishing house brought out novels, plays and poetry by such literary luminaries as Samuel Beckett, Henry Miller, William Burroughs, Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Raymond Queneau, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Marguerite Duras, Nathalie Sarraute, Claude Simon, Robert Pinget and many others.
The John Calder Prize is now closed for submissions.
With thanks, the judges for the 2025 John Calder Prize are:
Fiona Sze-Lorrain:
Fiona Sze-Lorrain is a writer, poet, translator, musician, and editor. One of the few English-language woman writers who works across genres, cultures, and artistic expressions, she writes and translates in English, French, and Chinese. Her work includes a novel-in-stories, Dear Chrysanthemums (Scribner, 2023), five poetry collections, most recently Rain in Plural (Princeton, 2020) and The Ruined Elegance (Princeton, 2016), eighteen books of translation, and three coedited anthologies of international literature. Longlisted for the 2024 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, she was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Best Translated Book Award, and the Derek Walcott Poetry Prize among other honors. A 2019–20 Abigail R. Cohen Fellow at the Columbia University Institute for Ideas and Imagination and the inaugural writer-in-residence at the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, she lives in Paris where she serves as an editor at Vif Éditions. As a zheng harpist, she has performed widely in Europe, Asia, and the U.S. A judge for the 2025 Dublin Literary Award, she currently serves on the committee of the SoA’s Translators Association. She is also involved in negotiation, mediation, and conflict resolution. She lives in Paris.
Jon McGregor:
Jon McGregor is the author of four novels and a story collection. He is the winner of the IMPAC Dublin Literature Prize, Betty Trask Prize, and Somerset Maugham Award, and has twice been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize.
He is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nottingham, where he edits The Letters Page, a literary journal in letters. He was born in Bermuda in 1976, grew up in Norfolk, and now lives in Nottingham.
Helen Oyeyemi:
Helen Oyeyemi’s eleven books include Gingerbread (2019) Parasol Against the Axe (2024) and, most recently, A New New Me. She’s a recipient of the Somerset Maugham Award and PEN’s Open Book Award, and her novel Peaces was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize.
Sheila Colvin-Calder
Sheila Colvin has spent most of her working life in the arts. She worked at the Edinburgh International Festival for ten years, ultimately becoming its first Associate Director. She acted as General Manager of Aldeburgh Foundation (now Britten Pears Arts) and was a founder member of the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh.
Alma Books
Alma Books was set up in October 2005 by Alessandro Gallenzi and Elisabetta Minervini, the founders of Hesperus Press. Following its takeover of the Oneworld Classics list in February 2012, it now publishes around forty new titles a year, mainly in the field of classics. Alma takes around forty per cent of its titles from English-language originals, while the rest are translations from French, Spanish, Italian, Russian and other languages. Alma Books includes the following imprints: Alma Books, Alma Classics, Overture (music imprint) and Calder Publications (founded 1950). The backlist comprises over 800 titles. Alma counts a dozen Nobel-Prize winners in its list and many more British and international award-winning authors and translators.