The Editors
Best Literary Translations is shaped by four series co-editors and a distinguished guest editor chosen annually to make final selections.
Series Co-Editors
Noh Anothai's translations range from classical Siamese poets to contemporary Thai authors. He has served as a judge for the Lucien Stryk Prize for Asian Literature in Translation and taught creative writing for almost a decade. Anothai received his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature (Track for International Writers) at Washington University in St. Louis in 2023. He adjuncts on the side while continuing his work on the anthology, which he has described as a vital creative and intellectual community beyond academia.
Wendy Call is the author, co-editor, or translator of eight books. She co-founded Best Literary Translations in October 2020 following a conversation with World Literature Today editor Daniel Simon. Call has been a Fulbright Scholar in Colombia and Translator-in-Residence at the University of Iowa, as well as a fellow of Cornell University's Institute of Comparative Modernities and the National Endowment for the Arts. She teaches creative nonfiction in the Rainier Writing Workshop MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University.
Joining the series with the 2027 edition, Sara Elkamel holds an MA in arts journalism from Columbia University and an MFA in poetry from New York University. She is the author of the poetry chapbooks Field of No Justice (African Poetry Book Fund & Akashic Books, 2021) and Garden City (Beloit Poetry Journal, 2026). Her translations include Mona Kareem's chapbook I Will Not Fold These Maps (Poetry Translation Centre, 2023) and Dalia Taha's Enter World (Graywolf Press, 2026). Her awards include a Pushcart Prize, the Southeast Review's 2023 Gearhart Poetry Prize, the Michigan Quarterly Review's 2022 Goldstein Poetry Prize, Tinderbox Poetry Journal's 2022 Brett Elizabeth Jenkins Poetry Prize, Redivider's 2021 Blurred Genre Contest, and Columbia Journal's 2025 Online Translation Contest. She lives in Cairo.
Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún’s published works include Edwardsville by Heart (2018), Ìgbà Èwe (2021) — a bilingual Yorùbá translation of Emily R. Grosholz’s Childhood — and Èṣù at the Library & Other Poems (2024). He has translated into Yorùbá works by Haruki Murakami, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, and Wọlé Ṣóyínká, among others, and received the Premio Ostana Special Prize (Italy, 2016) for advocacy in indigenous language rights. He is the publisher of OlongoAfrica. A former Fulbright Scholar and Chevening Research Fellow at the British Library, he lives between Lagos and Minneapolis.
Past Co-Editor
Öykü Tekten is a poet, translator, editor, and archivist living between Granada and New York. She was a series co-editor for the first three editions of Best Literary Translations (2024–2026), overseeing Middle Eastern literatures. She is a founding member of Pinsapo, a NY-based collective and press focused on work in and about translation, and a contributing editor and archivist with Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative. She is the translator of Selected Poems by Betül Dünder (Belladonna* Collaborative, 2023) and co-translator of Separated from the Sun by İlhan Sami Çomak (Smokestack Books, 2022).
Guest Editors by Year
Author of ten celebrated collections of poetry, including The Asking: New and Selected Poems (2023). A former chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, she is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. An acclaimed translator herself, Hirshfield's work has been translated into seventeen languages. The 2024 edition was dedicated to Edith Grossman.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author of six novels, three collections of short stories, five poetry collections, and three works of nonfiction. The only author to have won the International Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize twice. Originally writing in Spanish, her work has been translated into English, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Korean. Received the 2024 Pulitzer Prize.
National Book Award winner (2019, Sight Lines) and recipient of the 2025 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry for Lifetime Achievement from Yale University. Former U.S. Poet Laureate. Author of twelve books of poetry, including Into the Hush (Copper Canyon Press, 2025). Also published The Silk Dragon II: Translations of Chinese Poetry (2024). Professor emeritus at the Institute of American Indian Arts.
Classicist, translator, and scholar renowned for her acclaimed translations of Homer's Odyssey (2017) and Iliad (2023) — the first English translations of both works by a woman. Her translations have been praised for their accessibility, rigorous fidelity, and literary freshness. The 2027 edition is forthcoming from Deep Vellum.