Two Faroese works featured in Best Literary Translations 2025

Texas-based publishing house Deep Vellum is publishing its second annual anthology celebrating literary translators’ works. 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.

Among the selected texts are poems from Kim Simonsen’s 2013 poetry collection Hvat hjálpir einum menniskja at vakna ein morgun hesumegin hetta áratúsundið (Eng. What good does it do for a person to wake up one morning this side of the new millennium) and poems from Lív Maria Róadóttir Jæger’s 2020 poetry collection Eg skrivi á vátt pappír (Eng. I Write on Wet Paper). The two Faroese works have been translated into English by Randi Ward and Bradley Harmon respectively, and were originally published in English in Scandinavian Review and Circumference Magazine respectively. The two translated works of Faroese poetry were selected from submissions from dozens of countries to be included in the anthology highlighting excellent literature from a diverse range of authors and translators.

The 2025 edition of the anthology is guest edited by Pulitzer Prize winner Cristina Rivera Garza and coedited by Noh Anothai, Wendy Call, Öykü Tekten and Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún. The book will be released on 29 April and is available for pre-order now on Deep Vellum’s online bookshop and Amazon.