English PEN has announced the latest winners of its bi-annual Writers in Translation awards which help publishers market, promote, champion and celebrate literature in translation. Four books were selected by English PEN’s Writers in Translation Committee, chaired by Ros Schwartz.

The winning titles cover a diversity of cultures including Burma, Iraq, Syria and Columbia. The winners are:

Bones Will Crow: 15 Contemporary Burmese Poets, translated from the Burmese by ko ko thett and James Byrne.  To be published by Arc Publications.

This is the first anthology of contemporary Burmese poets published in the West, and includes the work of Burmese poets who have been in exile and in prison.

The Iraqi Christ, by Hassan Blasim, translated from the Arabic by Jonathan Wright. To be published by Comma Press.

This collection of short stories shines a clear light into the dark absurdities of Iraq’s recent past, making some of the horrors real with the help of the unreal.

Woman in the Crossfire, by Samar Yazbek, translated from the Arabic by Max Weiss. To be published by Haus Publishing.

A unique report of the first five months of the Syrian uprising, Samar Yazbek offers a precise and personal account.

The Sound of Things Falling, by Juan Gabriel Vasquez, translated from the Spanish by Anne McLean. To be published by Bloomsbury Publishing.

A moving revelation of the monstrous consequences of the drug trade for daily life in Colombia, the thriller The Sound of Things Falling won Spain’s prestigious Alfaguara Prize on publication in 2011.

For more information contact [email protected]

Our next round of submissions opens in September 2012 for books published in the first half of 2013 (January – July)

See: English PEN