Best Literary Translations (BLT) is "the first U.S. anthology devoted to celebrating the breadth of literary translators’ work". It is a "new annual featuring the year’s best poetry, short fiction, and essay, drawn from U.S.-affiliated literary journals and magazines"[1] and curated by four series co-editors and one guest editor. The anthology series aims to celebrate world literature, and honor the brilliant work of translators and the literary journals that publish this work.[2]
The inaugural edition in 2024 was guest-edited by Jane Hirshfield.
Best Literary Translations is published by Deep Vellum in Texas. The inaugural edition of Best Literary Translations anthology was published in 2024 with four co-editors Noh Anothai, Wendy Call, Oyku Tekten and Kola Tubosun. It was guest-edited by Jane Hirshfield, with a dedication to Edith Grossman. Of the first edition, World Literature Today writes "in a world in which nationalism increasingly carves moats between literatures, may the 2025 edition continue building a world literature portrait for the ages."[3]
Jack Rockwell of the North American Review writes of the anthology: "BLT 2024 at once advocates to a wider audience for the importance of publishing and reading literary translations, and makes important claims within the translation community about the practice’s possibilities, argued forcefully on political and aesthetic grounds."[4]
The 2025 guest-editor has been announced as Pulitzer prizewinning writer Cristina Rivera Garza.[1]