Quentin Véron, a first-year LLLC graduate student enrolled in the dual degree of MA in French-MFALT has been awarded the 2026 PEN/Heim translation grant for his translation from the French of Solitude of a Python in Paris by Romain Gary (writing as Émile Ajar). The PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grants promote the publication and reception of translated world literature into English; each translator will receive a grant of up to $4,000 to support the translation’s completion. Eirill Alvilde Falck and Allison Stickley, MFA in Literary Translation alumni, were also included in this year’s recipients of the prestigious prize. Read below for the judges’ commendations on the prizes, and congratulations to all the winners!

• Quentin Véron’s translation from the French of Solitude of a Python in Paris by Romain Gary (writing as Émile Ajar)

  Romain Gary’s Gros-Câlin, first published in 1974 under the pseudonym Émile Ajar, occupies a unique and fascinating place in French literary history. When the author’s true identity was revealed after his death, it was hailed as one of the great literary revelations of the century––unmasking the only writer ever to win the prestigious Prix Goncourt twice. Gros-Câlin (“Big Hug” in English) tells the story of Michel Cousin, a lonely and eccentric Parisian statistician who adopts an eight-foot python in his quest for affection. With sensitivity, wit, and creative daring, Quentin Véron recreates in English the puzzling “foreign” language that a bored Cousin invents for himself, through which themes of affection, alienation, and rebirth take on renewed resonance. Navigating the “deluge of amusing malapropisms, puns, literary allusions, and warmly pathetic situational comedy” (translator’s words) of Gary’s signature “Ajarism,” Véron deftly renders the novel’s humor, pathos, and linguistic playfulness without losing its peculiar absurdity and tenderness.
   

• Eirill Alvilde Falck’s translation from the Kven and Norwegian of The Heart of the Forest by M. Seppola Simonsen

  The Heart of the Forest is an award-winning poetry collection written in both Norwegian and Kven— the Kven people are a Finnic ethnic minority in northern Norway whose language is spoken by fewer than 10,000 people. M. Seppola Simonsen, a nonbinary poet, is from the Norwegian island of Senja, and their exquisite, short poems explore the Kven heritage and the intersection of identity, language, and geography. Eirill Alvilde Falck’s translations have appeared widely in anthologies and literary magazines. Her translations vividly capture Simonsen’s imagery and their ability to render the power and complexity of nature and humanity’s place in it.
   

• Milena Sanabria Contreras and Allison Stickley’s translation from the Spanish of A Brief History of Failure by Fátima Villalta

  Fátima Villalta was born in Nicaragua in 1994 and currently lives in exile in Mexico. Breve Historia del Fracaso (A Brief History of Failure) is a collection of short stories that takes the reader through one hundred years of Nicaraguan history, beginning in a not-too-distant future and ending with a story set in the early 1900s. This will be Villalta’s first publication to be translated into another language. Milena Sanabria Contreras and Allison Stickley’s translation is remarkable for how it renders the voices of the everyday Nicaraguans populating these stories—foot soldiers, small bureaucrats, young people, and artists. While retaining the intimacy of the stories, Contreras and Stickley deftly put forward a history that isn’t as well known in the anglophone world. Their absorbing translation will find new resonances in our politically unstable times.

You can also read about all of the awardees here!