Words Without Borders & WWB Campus

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The home for international literature since 2003. Winners of the Whiting Literary Magazine Prize. https://linktr.ee/wordswithoutborders

A pink-and-purple gradient with border lines in the upper left and bottom right corners. A photo of Tim Tim Cheng in a circular frame is laid over a black circle. Below it, the following text in white and black: Tim Tim Cheng Winner of the 2026 Momentum Grant for Early-Career Translators Judged by Jeremy Tiang Funded by the Malecha Family Foundation
An illuminated manuscript, open on an embroidered red textile, with the text “2025 Armory Square Prize for South Asian Literature in Translation.‘The Believer’By Shobasakthi, translated from Tamil by Sumathy Sivamohan” and the quote “Murugaverl named all three children after cherished flowers in France: The eldest child was called Thuleep, after tulip; the daughters were called Mimosa and Doreen. Murugaverl and Thaatchayini called each other, with coy affection, “Thuleep-Maman” and “Thuleep-Papa.” Now, Aslam had gotten rid of the name Thuleep forever. Soon, he would announce to his parents that he had embraced Islam. His name was now Aslam, “He who is Protected.”
An abstract illustration of a soccer player silhouetted against a background of flames and female symbols, with the text “Nonfiction @wwborders. ‘Men without Women: On Soccer and Self-Narration’ By Moeen Farrokhi, Translated from Persian by Poupeh Missaghi”
An image of a three-wheeler with the text: “Interview. ‘Shouting at a Low Volume: A Conversation with E. M. Palitha Edirisooriya’ By Kasun Pathirage & samodH Porawagamage, translated from Sinhala by samodH Porawagamage & Kasun Pathirage” and the quote “I gathered that the author was a three-wheeler driver by profession. The book was made up of his lived experiences, reflections, and as-told-to accounts, all on the road. Later at home, I could not find anything more about the book or its author online.”
A darkened panel from “Girl with a Gun: Lithuania, 1947” with the text “Graphic Literature. ‘Girl with a Gun: Lithuania, 1947’ By Lina Itagaki & Marius Marcinkevičius, translated from Lithuanian by Kotryna Garanasvili” and the WWB logo.
An image of a soccer player’s feet kicking a ball with the text “‘Queens Football’ By Alberto Salcedo Ramos, translated from Spanish by Rosalind Harvey” and the quote “Las Regias make unlikely footballers: they are always falling over, they kick the ball up in the air when they’re less than a foot from goal, they can’t control the ball on their chests, never mind with their feet, and they’re incapable of passing to a teammate a mere ten yards away. This clumsiness, which is not deliberate but natural, paradoxically becomes their most persuasive weapon.”
An image of Laurence Laluyaux speaking at a podium with the text “2026 Ottaway Award for the Promotion of International Literature. “In the Prompter’s Box, But Never Center Stage: Laurence Laluyaux’s Ottaway Award Acceptance Speech” and the quote “We are told that we are in the heyday of translated literature here, in the English-speaking world. That there are more translations than ever, from a greater variety of languages than ever, that readers and particularly young readers are no longer turning to international fiction out of anthropological interest but because of a need for pushing back boundaries, crossing borders, looking at how our neighbors see the world but also, more urgently than ever, giving platforms to underrepresented voices.”
The text “In Dubai with Danabelle Gutierrez, By Nathalie Handal” with a portrait of Gutierrez on an abstract blue background and the quote ““There’s a Filipino slang expression, “Sasakyan n’ya yung trip mo,” which basically means, “Whatever you feel like doing, I’ll ride along”—that, I think, is the mood of Dubai.”
An array of Russian nesting dolls with the text “2026 Ottaway Award for the Promotion of International Literature. ‘The Comparison Game’ by Laurence Laluyaux” and the quote “ Ahead of new releases of her work earlier this year, Tove Ditlevsen, who is going back into print all over the world, was compared to Lucia Berlin and Clarice Lispector. The trope here is clearly rediscovered women. When I told a Danish friend, she was surprised and said that if she had to pick a comparison, she would have said Jean Rhys. Another Danish friend said Carson McCullers. Both asked why there was a need to compare her to English-language authors at all.”
A collage of the books on the June Watchlist with the text “The June Watchlist, by Tobias Carroll. New and forthcoming translations from French, Faroese, Slovak, and more.”
An eighteenth-century Indian painting of a man in a supplicating pose with the text “2025 Armory Square Prize for South Asian Literature in Translation. “A Letter from the Farmer Suicide Commission” By Manoj Pandey, translated from Hindi by Punarvasu Joshi” and the quote “But weren’t The Golden Country’s newspapers our own? Shouldn’t they have thought for a moment about how detrimental such news is to the prestige of The Golden Country? In blindly aping foreign newspapers, these newspapers have lost all credibility. Who, except the wicked at heart and the agents of the enemy country, would believe that the life of farmers in The Golden Country has become so dire that they are forced to commit suicide?”
Male mannequins in a store window with the text “from ‘Fractals’ By Ileana Garma, translated from Spanish by Allison A. deFreese” and the quote “your son isn’t part of our flock/your son is being left behind/your son is being left alone”
Side-by-side black-and-white, early twentieth-century photograph portraits of Emilie Demant Hatt and Johan Turi with the text “Fiction. ‘A Sámi Woman’s Sin: Imagining Other People’s Sex Lives’ By Suvi West, translated from Finnish by Mia Spangenberg” and the quote “Scholars would protest that Emilie was referring to the book they were going to write together. Sure! Let me emphasize that they were all alone, just the two of them, in a remote cabin in the fells in summertime.”
A close-up photo of shattered glass with the text “Fiction. ‘Pink Dogs’ By Simoné Goldschmidt-Lechner, translated from German by Melody Makeda Ledwon” and the quote “It takes time before Z. and the boy join forces, before they begin to understand each other. For a great while Z. is at a loss with him. His teenage years have long passed, and Sam slips quietly through the hallways, moves through the rooms as if he wants to disappear into the wall or floor. Growing closer means knowing more, and knowing more is dangerous.”
A painting of a deer in a forest with the text “from the archive: Poetry. ‘translation’ By Maja Haderlap, translated from German by Tess Lewis” and the quote “does language know how to draw another language towards it/or only how to turn the other language away?”
The cover of “The Summer of the Serpent” with the WWB logo and the text “BOOK REVIEW. ‘The Fighting Spirit of Our Trifling Humanity’: Cecilia Eudave’s ‘The Summer of the Serpent’ by Cory Oldweiler” alongside the quote “In addition to its many references to ghostly language, the novel also hints at danger in otherwise innocuous observations, as with ‘The light came in like a sword, piercing the same spot every time, weakening the floor and sapping our mood.’”
A painting of a boat in a stormy sea with the text “FICTION: ‘The Other Side of the Sun’ By Kettly Mars, translated from French by Nathan H. Dize” and the quote “André’s face emerged from the cries of distress, he opened his mouth, called to Elisa, and stretched out his hands in her direction, but the sound and fury of the water stayed his speech, stifling it completely.”
The text “FROM THE ARCHIVE: GRAPHIC LITERATURE. ‘Gay Giant’ by Gabriel Ebensperger, translated from Spanish by Kelley D. Salas” with an illustrated panel in a cartoonish style, depicting a man driving a car with text reading “Have you ever had the feeling that even if you wanted to you’d never blend in?”
La forma de las cosas porvenir: ficciones especulativas del futuro Taller de escritura con Michel Nieva (español) Miércoles, 17 de junio 5:30pm–6:30pm ET Programa virtual ¿Quién tiene derecho a imaginar el futuro? Explora esta pregunta con el galardonado autor, poeta e investigador argentino Michel Nieva.
An ancient Greek marble statue of a young man with the text “from the archive: Poetry. ‘In Praise of the Nude Body’ By Mutsuo Takahashi, translated from Japanese by Jeffrey Angles” and the quote “Like the Greek summer sky,/Pure and fresh, a model of health itself/What made them so obscene were the girders/Supporting the eyes of those who watched”
Human creativity has value. Support writers and translators. Donate today: wwborders.live/2026SpringFundDrive WORDS WITHOUT BORDERS: THE HOME FOR INTERNATIONAL LITERATURE
A photo of a pair of shoes in boots and a spade pointed toward the leaf-strewn ground with the text “Poetry: ‘Portentous Song’ By Mujib Mehrdad, translated from Persian by Sholeh Wolpé” and the quote “I’ve been born so that the only kisses of my youth will come from the lips of mourners.”
A portrait of Adedayo Agarau on a blue abstract background with the text “In Ibadan with Adedayo Agarau, by Nathalie Handal” the WWB logo, and the quote “I have come to believe that the city’s most extraordinary, easily overlooked detail is how thick its air is with learning. Ibadan’s reputation elsewhere tilts toward the rust-orange roofs and endless sprawl, but the city is in fact an unlikely knowledge engine.”
A photo of a banana blossom with the text “2025 Armory Square Prize for South Asian Literature in Translation: ‘Aachchi, Who Never Aged’ By Kumudu Kumarasinghe, translated from Sinhala by Ciara Mandulee Mendis” and the quote “ A few years after these incidents, Aachchi and her family had to leave, as the landowner wanted the land back. In those days, our people were neither aware nor strong enough to stand up against things like this. Aachchi didn’t even know that she had the right to refuse to leave. She was helpless, but she thought she lived on someone else’s land, which had never been hers, and that it was time to return the land and be grateful to the owner for letting her live there that long.”
A photo of a distant figure in a desert landscape with the text “from the archive: Fiction. ‘A Night in Timimoun’ By Nina Bouraoui, translated from French by Aneesa Abbas Higgins” and the quote “I can hear you walking down to reception, to meet the man you love perhaps, I think about my husband, my daughters, I see them as three white dots spinning in the darkness, and then they vanish, leaving me to my space, to my adventure.”
Show authors and translators that their work has value.
Memory and Imagination: Writing Workshop with Michel Nieva (English) Wednesday, June 10 11am–12pm ET Virtual Program What sparks a memory, and how does it transform when it blends with our imagination? Explore this question with award-winning Argentinian author, poet, and researcher Michel Nieva.
The cover of “Twenty Minutes of Silence” with the text “BOOK REVIEW” and “With the Revolver in the Library: Hélène Bessette’s ‘Twenty Minutes of Silence’ by Hannah Weber,” alongside the WWB logo and the quote “Twenty Minutes of Silence is a loose interpretation of a murder mystery: a man is dead and his son has killed him—or was it his wife? Bessette eschews a steady narrative voice for a frenzied chorus and sprinkles the pages with superscript stage notes (for instance, ‘THE CRIME’).”
A picture of distant figures in a marshy plain with the text “2026 ARMORY SQUARE PRIZE. ‘Vedavalli, Saigon’ By Nagarathinam Krishna, translated from Tamil by Subhashree Beeman” and the quote “All-prevailing darkness. Heat. Solitude. Woman: Before marriage, I was Vedavalli, who upheld feminine ethics; after marriage, I have become Madame Felix Subburayan who, blessed with wifehood, strives to support my husband in every way possible.
A drawing of fossilized fishes above a white background with black text that reads: I wonder am I not rust growing on its bones? Why did we labor so hard for dirt and stones? There Are No Fossils Left in This Land By Taran Spalding-Jenkin, translated from Cornish by Elizabeth Ellis The Beating Heart: New CELTIC Writing.
WORDS WITHOUT BORDERS: THE HOME FOR INTERNATIONAL LITERATURE wwborders.live/2026SpringFundDrive Ottilie Mulzet, translator of Nobel laureate László Krasznahorkai and WWB contributor “I am deeply grateful to Words Without Borders not only for continually expanding the range of languages in which they publish, but also for upholding this crucial practice of fair treatment.”
The text “The May Watchlist, by Tobias Carroll. Experimental writing translated from Persian, satire translated from French, magical realism translated from Vietnamese, and more” on a pink background with the covers of the six books featured in the Watchlist
A photo of a tipped-over bowl and cherries strewn over a cloth with the text “Archive: Fiction. From ‘How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone’ By Saša Stanišić, translated from German by Anthea Bell” and the quote “Soon everyone was whispering about Francesco, not only the women now. That kind of thing was sick, said people, shaking their heads, and I discovered that there is love and love and not every kind of love is good.”
The cover of “Pure Men,” on which a man stares intently at the viewer, with the text “BOOK REVIEW: ‘Shit Pushers: On Mohamed Mbougar Sarr’s Pure Men, (translated from French by Lara Vergnaud);’ by Alex Tan” and the quote “Whose death is really at stake? An abstraction as flimsily manipulable and fabricated as “culture,” “values,” and “tradition” turns, in this rhetoric, into something alive, perceived to always be in peril of besiegement and extinction.”
An image of _______, overlaid in white text it reads: from the archive: Poetry, To Awaken with Her, By Uwe Kolbe, translated from German by Anne Posten, “I finally understand you, when she lies by me, when I hold her, her breath, when my hands are once more sure, of what they must curve to hold, to hold her form in the mornings, early, when the days bear her soft name, this gold reaches its goal.”
A photograph of a small, craggy island with the WWB logo, the text “From the archive: fiction. ‘The Navidad Incident: The Downfall of Matías Guili’ By Natsuki Ikezawa, translated from Japanese by Alfred Birnbaum” and the quote ““Strange things do happen in the sea, he remembers thinking, as he turned around to look—and there behind him was a bus, and peering out the windows were old men! Their faces looked yellow underwater.”
DONATE TODAY TO SUPPORT WRITERS AND TRANSLATORS. “Often, WWB reviews are the only major criticism on record of books in translation—without these pieces, essential novels, collections, and theory are at risk of falling through the cracks.” Adam Dalva, President of the National Book Critics Circle Photo of Adam Dalva
An array of book covers on a green background with the text “‘Global Reads: Summer Children’s and YA Releases Spanning Four Continents’ By Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp, Ruth Donnelly, Katy Dycus, Jackie Friedman Mighdoll & Shara Kronmal”
An overhead view of a coastal landscape with a small house or structure, the WWB logo and the url ‘wordswithoutborders.org.’ Text reads “‘Every Stone a Seed: Writing from Asturias,’ and “‘Against All Odds: On Asturian Language and Literature’ by Laura Marcos” with the quote “The fact that the situation is so precarious, the feeling that the future of both our language and literature is hanging by a thread, have driven some to cynicism. But it is also a fact that many people—writers and readers both—are still finding a home in Asturian literature.”
A sketch of a man paddling a boat overlaid with the WWB logo and white text that reads: from the archive: Poetry Three Poems By Ricardo Aleixo, translated from Portuguese by Dan Hanrahan “The night does not end and here I am dying again nameless and again”
A photo of Mai Serhan on a light blue background with the following text: The City and the Writer In al-Kabri with Mai Serhan By Nathalie Handal “I hope, above all, that al-Kabri now finds its rightful place in the republic of letters—a terrain that is hard to erase or occupy.”
A black background overlaid with a transparent line drawing of a child sketching, as well as the WWB logo in white and the following text in white: Every Stone a Seed: Writing from Asturias “I remain intact and frustrated: I’m unable to make my characters beat me, or even insult me or give me the evil eye. I’ll have to settle for building and dismantling castles of air in the air." “A Fist Loaded with the Future: Three Microessays” By Pablo Texón Translated from Asturian by Will Howard wordswithoutborders.org
White smoke against a black background, overlaid with text in white: POETRY Without Bounty By Elyas Alavi, translated from Persian by Sholeh Wolpé “we became fossils in a few ticks of the clock. Our ashes became thick smoke that polluted the night air and swelled over wires that link.”
A photo of Jessica Cohen and the following text: DONATE TODAY TO SUPPORT WRITERS AND TRANSLATORS. “WWB shows how crucial— and achievable—it is to both showcase translated literature and concretely support the translators whose labor makes it possible.” Jessica Cohen, award-winning translator and WWB contributor
The Words Without Borders logo and the following text over a light purple background with pale purple waves: We're Hiring: Administrative and Development Assistant Support the executive director in the management of the organization's operations and fiscal growth Full-time, remote Learn more and apply: wordswithoutborders.org/jobs
“I suppose that’s how I started out in life; I’ve been fighting since I was a little girl.” wordswithoutborders.org “Our Landscape” By Vanessa Gutiérrez Translated from Asturian by Scott Emblen-Jarrett Every Stone a Seed: Writing from Asturias
A Little Blue Tail By Kujira Sakisaka, translated from Japanese by Akagi Kobayashi Poetry “I know that, yet I nearly open my mouth to say you’ll be all right I won’t kill you.”
The White Breast, the Black Breast By Horacio Castillo, translated from Spanish by Samuel Gray “with pious resignation she would take it in her hand and put it to my lips saying: Drink, my child, and I would drink avidly the milk that gives more hunger.” from the archive: Poetry
The Words Without Borders logo and the following text over a light purple background with pale purple waves: We're Hiring: Engagement Editor Drive growth and engagement across our social media channels as we broaden the audience for international literature Part-time, remote Learn more and apply: wordswithoutborders.org/jobs
A grid featuring Sophie Hughes, Michele Hutchison, Mélanie Werder-Avilés, Rena Fukazawa, László Krasznahorkai, Jack Saebyok Jung, Suzana Vuljevic, Abdulrahman Ndegwa, Ottilie Mulzet, Nisrine Mbarki Ben Ayad, Jessica Cohen, and Michelle Chan Schmidt on a light green background. Below the images, on a black background, reads the following text in light green and light purple: Human creativity has value. Support writers and translators. Donate today: wwborders.live/2026SpringFundDrive
A black background with a white WWB logo and a transparent photo of a mother-of-pearl dish. White text is overlaid that reads: Every Stone a Seed: Writing from Asturias “Katie’s pixels are mother-of-pearl tears—they iridesce into—revelry” “I Bend the Rivers to My Whim: Six Poems” By María García Díaz, Translated from Asturian by Robin Munby wordswithoutborders.org
The Words Without Borders logo and the following text over a light purple background with pale purple waves: We're Hiring: Finance and Operations Manager Support all aspects of WWB’s financial, administrative, and HR activities Full-time, remote Learn more and apply: wordswithoutborders.org/jobs
A blue and purple gradient background with a large black circle behind a photo of Laurence Laluyaux. Her name is spelled out below the photo in white text on black backgrounds, and below that is the text "Winner of the 2026 Ottaway Award for the Promotion of International Literature"
A black background with a transparent photo of houses facing the ocean in Asturias, Spain. Overlaid is the WWB logo in white and the following text: Every Stone a Seed: Writing from Asturias “The Asturian literary scene is full of talent and gaining new members all the time—some of them young, others older authors who, having previously written and published in Spanish, have turned to Asturian in middle age.” “Against All Odds: On Asturian Language and Literature” By Laura Marcos wordswithoutborders.org
An image of the six book covers for LIGHTMESH, THE ABYSS, SLEEP JOURNEYS, SÁMI FOLKTALES, SPRINGTIME IN THE BONES, and THE PAIN OF OTHERS, to the right is black text that reads: The April Watchlist, by Tobias Carroll, Sámi Folktales, fiction translated from Portuguese, Spanish, and Tamil, and poetry from Korea and Pakistan.
An image of the book cover for BODY DOUBLE to the right of black text that reads: BOOK REVIEW “Josefsson’s translation maintains this enigmatic and arresting quality; there is a sense that each word is carefully chosen and calibrated. There are no coincidences, each repetition is deliberate—a code for the reader to crack.” “‘Phantom Pain’: Ghostly Encounters in Hanna Johansson’s Body Double” By Esther King