The 2024 Gulf Coast Prize in Translation

The 2024 Gulf Coast Prize in Translation is now open for poetry submissions. (The contest is open to short prose, fiction, and nonfiction in odd-numbered years.) The winner receives $1,000 and publication in the journal. Two honorable mentions will each receive $250. All entries will be considered for publication as Online Exclusives.

The 2024 Gulf Coast Prize in Translation will be judged by Kristin Dykstra. For previous winners, honorable mentions, and judges, see the sidebar.

The contest entry fee includes either a one-year ($20) or half-year ($10) subscription to Gulf Coast, beginning with the issue in which the corresponding prize winners are published. 

Deadline: August 31st.

Contest Guidelines

  • Entries are only accepted via our online submission manager. Each entry is either $20 (which includes a yearlong subscription to Gulf Coast), or $10 (which includes a half-year subscription).
  • As part of your submission, include the text in its original language, and provide a brief synopsis (no more than 200 words) of the work and the author you are translating.
  • Only previously unpublished translations will be considered.
  • The contest will be judged blindly, so please do not include a cover letter, your name, or any contact information in the uploaded document.
  • We will not consider submissions without permissions. In your submission, please provide a note (from the translator) in the Submittable "Comments" section, stating that permissions are granted. In the event that the piece makes it to the final judging round, please provide written permission from the copyright holder granting you right to translate the work in your contest submission. Permission should name the work being translated, date consent was given, and identify the copyright holder.

The Gulf Coast Prize in Translation was founded by the Editors in 2014. The winner receives $1,000 and publication in the print edition of Gulf Coast. Honorable mentions receive $250. All entries will be considered for publication as GC Online Exclusives. 

Kristin Dykstra

Kristin Dykstra

Kristin Dykstra is a writer, literary translator, and scholar. She is the author of the prose poetry collection, Dissonance, winner of the Phoenix Emerging Poet Book Prize (forthcoming with the University of Chicago Press, 2025). Veliz Books published her translation of Amanda Berenguer’s collection, The Lady of Elche (2023), and the same press will bring out her translation of The Star-Spangled Brand, by Marcelo Morales, in 2025. Dykstra is principal translator of The Winter Garden Photograph, by Reina María Rodríguez, winner of the 2020 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation and finalist for the National Translation Award. Her translation of 13 lunas 13, by Tina Escaja, won a 2023 Gold Medal from the International Latino Book Awards program. Dykstra has translated many other books, by Juan Carlos Flores, Rito Ramón Aroche, Ángel Escobar, and Omar Pérez; as well as additional works by Morales, Berenguer, and Rodríguez. She coedited the cross-cultural magazine Mandorla: New Writing from the Americas Nueva escritura de las Américas, issues 7–16, with Roberto Tejada and Gabriel Bernal Granados. She held a 2012 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Literary Translation. Dykstra’s most recent scholarly chapter, examining Cuban poetry 1959–1989, appears in The Cambridge History of Cuban Literature (eds. Vicky Unruh and Jacqueline Loss, 2024).