Wendy Call and contributors present 'Best Literary Translations 2025'

Third Place Books welcomes series editor Wendy Call and Best Literary Translation contributors Monika Cassel, Gabriela Ramirez-Chavez, and Cynthia Steele for a reading of work from . Guest edited by Pulitzer Prize winner Cristina Rivera Garza and published by Deep Vellum, contemporary and historical works stand side by side in this second edition of the annual anthology, including poems, short stories, essays, and hybrid works drawn from submissions spanning dozens of countries and languages.

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Best Literary Translations redefines the canon of global literatures in English translation, showcasing the brave and brilliant work of contemporary translators and editors.

Guest edited by Pulitzer Prize winner Cristina Rivera Garza, Best Literary Translations 2025 features poetry and prose originally written in nineteen languages, brought into English by some of the most talented translators working today.

Contemporary and historical works stand side by side in the second edition of the annual anthology, including poems, short stories, essays, and hybrid works drawn from submissions spanning dozens of countries and languages. Featuring work from the top literary journals with U.S.-based editors, ranging from ANMLY to World Literature Today, BLT 2025 honors excellent literature from a diverse range of authors and translators.

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Wendy Call is author of No Word for Welcome, winner of the Grub Street National Book Prize for Nonfiction, and the chapbook Tilled Paths Through Wilds of Thought. She is also co-editor of the craft anthology Telling True Stories, translator of three books of poems by Irma Pineda, and co-translator of How to Be a Good Savage and Other Poems, by Mikeas Sánchez. She was a 2015 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow in Poetry Translation, a 2019 Fulbright Faculty Scholar in Colombia, and 2023 Translator in Residence at the University of Iowa. She teaches in the Rainier Writing Workshop MFA Program at Pacific Lutheran University.

Monika Cassel’s poems and translations from German have appeared in The Adroit Journal, AGNI, Guesthouse, Orion, Poetry, and Poetry Northwest. She was awarded an ALTA Travel Fellowship in 2016 and invited to the TOLEDO-Programm’s 2022 JUNIVERS for translators of German poetry, and her translations of Daniela Danz were finalists for the Rhine Translation Prize and the Malinda A. Markham Translation Prize. She holds an MFA in poetry from Warren Wilson College and a PhD in comparative literature from the University of Michigan and is an assistant poetry editor for Four Way Review.

Gabriela Ramirez-Chavez is a Seattle-based poet and translator born to Guatemalan immigrants. Her poetry has appeared in literary journals and anthologies, including The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the United States. As a translator, she focuses on Indigenous literatures of Latin America, especially from Mesoamerica. Her translations of Rosa Chávez (Maya K’iche’ and Kaqchikel), with whom she regularly collaborates, have been featured on NPR and in Poetry, World Literature Today, BOMB, and Daughters of Latin America: An International Anthology of Latine Women, among other publications. She is the co-translator of Tsunami: Women’s Voices from Mexico.

Cynthia Steele is an emerita professor at the University of Washington in Seattle. She has published translations of books by Inés Arredondo, José Emilio Pacheco, and María Gudín. Her work has also appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, New England Review, Washington Square Review, Chicago Review, and Agni.

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