Announcing World Literature Today’s “Best of” Nominees for 2025

As part of our annual year-end celebration of the hundreds of writers showcased in the pages of World Literature Today, the editors have chosen thirteen representative selections as some of the best work of 2025. We’re delighted to announce the following eight translators among our nominees for Best Literary Translations 2027:

• Miriam Åkervall for “Four Poems from Sweden,” by Marie Lundquist (from Swedish)
• Omnia Amin for “The Grain of Our Hearts,” by Donia Al Amal Ismael (from Arabic)
• Kymm Coveney for “Two Poems from Ecuador,” by Mónica Ojeda (from Spanish)
• Rosalind Harvey for “Writing with Light: The 2025 Puterbaugh Lecture,” by Guadalupe Nettel (from Spanish)
• Elisabeth Jaquette for “The Lemon Tree,” by Rania Mamoun (from Arabic)
• Erika Mihálycsa & Peter Sherwood for “(books read when drunk),” by Edina Szvoren (from Hungarian)
• Nancy Roberts for “They Call It Displacement—In Reality, It’s Hell (This Is My Story),” by Nour Abo-Rokb (from Arabic)

According to series publisher Deep Vellum, “Best Literary Translations (BLT) has arisen out of a tangible public demand for inclusive and transparent cultural conversations. The past few years have brought an urgent emphasis on listening to underheard voices from cultures around the world, acknowledging who speaks and how, and naming the people who make our global literary conversations possible. BLT offers some of the best of global literature in English-language translation, presenting an opportunity to expand the audience for world literature.” WLT is honored to have had selections appear in BLT 2024, 2025, and 2026. The 2027 anthology will be guest-edited by Emily Wilson. Translators who wish to self-nominate their own work may do so on Deep Vellum’s Submittable page.

WLT is also pleased to announce the following six nominations for Pushcart Prize LI:

• Safia Elhillo, “First Warm Sunday of the Year” (poem)
• Margarita Engle, “Silenced? Fear and Courage in an Era of Book Bans” (essay)
• Omar Hammash, “Ringtones of My Mobile Phone,” translated by Ibtisam Barakat (essay)
• Ha-yun Jung, “Besieged” (creative nonfiction)
• Adam Morgan, “Criticism Is Literature. Why Is It Vanishing?” (essay)
• Mahtem Shiferraw, “Fire” (poem)

Published every year since 1976, Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses calls itself “the most honored literary project in America—including Highest Honors from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Since 1976, hundreds of presses and thousands of writers of short stories, poetry and essays have been represented in our annual collections.”

WLT’s editors and staff would like to thank the many writers, translators, reviewers, artists, contributing editors, board members, University of Oklahoma colleagues and students, benefactors, and readers who make our work possible. We are honored to share the fruits of our editorial labors with readers worldwide, and we look forward to showcasing many more outstanding international literary voices in 2026, our 100th year of continuous publication.