2026 Prize

Congratulations to the winner of the Stevns Translation Prize 2026: Ally Le.

As this year’s prizewinner, Ally will translate Maik Cây’s Bảo Tàng Lông [Museum of Hair], to be published by Peirene Press (UK) and Two Lines Press (US) in 2027. She will receive mentorship from acclaimed translator Nguyễn An Lý – who will support her in translating her first full-length work of fiction – and a four-week retreat in the French Pyrenees.

This year's finalists, receiving special commendation from the judges are:

Lukas Tuyết Tùng
Nguyễn Thị Bích Trâm
Chau Anh Nguyễn

Huge congratulations to Ally and our three finalists. And thank you to everyone who applied — the prize received 67 submissions this year, and judges Nguyễn An Lý, Vi Khi Nao, and Deborah Smith were impressed by the range of approaches to what was a challenging excerpt.

The Winner

Ally Le (she/they) is a historian, writer, poet and translator working between Hong Kong and Vietnam. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Comparative Literature and Hong Kong Studies from the University of Hong Kong, and is reading for an MPhil in childhood history in French colonial Vietnam at her alma mater. Ally speaks Vietnamese, Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese, some French, and translates between Vietnamese, Chinese, and English. In 2025, she was the recipient of a Residential Bursary to attend the British Centre for Literary Translation (BCLT) Summer School at the University of East Anglia, Norwich (UK). Her creative writings and translations have appeared on Zzz Review (on hiatus), Mekong Review, Art Nation, Canto Cutie, The Primer, The Newsletter of the IIAS (Leiden University), and forthcoming elsewhere.

The Book

The winning translator will receive a $6400 / £4800 commission to translate Bảo Tàng Lông by Maik Cây, to be published by Peirene Press (UK) and Two Lines Press (US) in 2027.

Bảo Tàng Lông [Museum of Hair] by Maik Cây is a daring and intimate novel centered on a fictional queer foremother: the reclusive artist Trần Bích Băng. When she dies, her abandoned apartment unveils a secret archive of women’s hair, each strand a memory of desire and connection. Across eight kaleidoscopic tales told by those drawn into her orbit—from a granddaughter tracing an inheritance of art and madness, to a trespasser uncovering her secrets—Băng emerges as writer, lover, prophet, and digital ghost. Inventive, haunting, and deeply tender, this visionary work explores memory, exile, and the power of storytelling to resurrect what has been erased.

The Mentorship

This year’s winner will work with established literary translator Nguyễn An Lý (Chinatown and Elevator in Sài Gòn by Thuận and Water: A Chronicle by Nguyễn Ngọc Tư). An Lý will offer the winning translator feedback and advice throughout the translation process and support them as they embark on their first full-length literary translation.

The Retreat

An 18th-century mill house in the foothills of the French Pyrenees. The house comfortably sleeps 5 or 6 and comes fully equipped, including a large garden with a natural swimming pond. The closest village is a 10-minute walk from the retreat. Stay at the retreat is free and covered by the Stevns Translation Prize; travel expenses will be covered up to $1,000.

2026 Judges

Nguyễn An Lý

Nguyễn An Lý lives in Hồ Chí Minh City, Vietnam. Her translations into Vietnamese include works by Margaret Atwood, Kazuo Ishiguro, J. L. Borges, Amos Oz, and the poetry in The Lord of the Rings. She won English PEN Translates Awards for Chinatown (Tilted Axis Press, 2022) and Elevator in Sài Gòn (Tilted Axis Press, 2024) by Thuận, and Water: A Chronicle (Major Books, 2024) by Nguyễn Ngọc Tư. Chinatown also won the 2023 ALTA National Translation Award in Prose and was the runner-up of the 2023 TA First Translation Prize. She co-founded and co-publishes the independent online Zzz Review (on hiatus) and ZNZ Publishing.

Vi Khi Nao

Vi Khi Nao is the author of seven poetry collections, the short-story collection A Brief Alphabet of Torture (winner of the 2016 FC2’s Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize), and the novel Swimming with Dead Stars. Her poetry collection The Old Philosopher won the Nightboat Books Prize for Poetry in 2014. Her book Suicide: the Autoimmune Disorder of the Psyche was published by 11:11. She was the Fall 2019 fellow at the Black Mountain Institute, and her work includes poetry, fiction, film, and cross-genre collaboration. She was the 2022 recipient of the Jim Duggins PhD Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize.

Deborah Smith

Deborah Smith studied Korean literature at SOAS. She has translated several books by Han Kang and Bae Suah. From 2015 to 2022 she published translations from across Asia at Tilted Axis Press. After five years in north India, she recently moved back to Doncaster, her hometown.

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