August is Women in Translation Month! To help bookstores and libraries celebrate, we’ve put together this roundup of 12 books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction—all both written and translated by women—to spotlight all month and year-round. (We publish longer reading lists each month as well—check out our most recent reading list for Women in Translation Month for more ideas!)
Fiction
The Book Censor’s Library by Bothayna Al-Essa
Translated from the Arabic by Sawad Hussain and Ranya Abdelrahman
Restless Books | April 30, 2024
Distributor: Publishers Group West
ISBN: 9781632063342
Al-Essa’s novel is “a perilous and fantastical satire of banned books, secret archives, and the looming eye of an all-powerful government.”
The Trees by Claudia Peña Claros
Translated from the Spanish by Robin Myers
Relegation Books | August 20, 2024
Distributor: Itasca Books
ISBN: 9798986767024
In these stories, Claros “piercingly renders a world in perpetual tumult, marked both by convulsive disputes over property and power and by nature’s resistance in the face of human injustice.”
Translated from Chinese by Jacqueline Leung
Two Lines Press | April 29, 2025
Distributor: Publishers Group West
ISBN: 9781949641769
This novel is “a dystopian exploration of body autonomy, relationships, and late capitalism defies and then reassembles dark realities.”
Counsel Culture by Kim Hye-jin
Translated from the Korean by Jamie Chang
Restless Books | March 5, 2024
Distributor: Publishers Group West
ISBN: 9781632062321
This novel is “the contemplative, superbly-crafted story of a woman scapegoated by sudden tragedy, and the unexpected paths she must wander in search of redemption.”
The Case of Cem by Vera Mutafchieva
Translated from the Bulgarian by Angela Rodel
Sandorf Passage | January 16, 2024
Distributor: Independent Publishers Group
ISBN: 9789533514376
This novel, “presented as a series of depositions by historical figures before a court, tells a straightforward tale: Upon the death of Ottoman Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror in 1481, his eldest son Bayezid takes the throne.”
Poetry
Blue Flare: Three Haitian Poets—Évelyne Trouillot, Marie-Célie Agnant, Maggy de Coster
Translated from the Haitian Kreyòl and French by Danielle Legros Georges
Zephyr Press | September 17, 2024
Distributor: Consortium Book Sales & Distribution
ISBN: 9781938890314
In this collection, “three celebrated poets illuminate the complexity of life in Haiti and its diaspora in the 21st century.”
A Woman Looks Over Her Shoulder by Brynja Hjálmsdóttir
Translated from Icelandic by Rachel Britton
Circumference Books | November 2024
Distributor: Asterism Books
ISBN: 9781949918076
These poems “explore what it can be like to be a woman and to slither through and away from threat to find voice and form and power, no matter how strange.”
Translated from the French by Erín Moure
Book*hug Press | 2024
Distributor: Independent Publishers Group
ISBN: 9781771668828
This is “a book-length poem that plunges us more deeply into the notion of the idyll and into the polyhedric structure of love.”
Translated from the Italian by Roberta Antognini and Deborah Woodard
World Poetry Books | April 17, 2025
Distributor: Asterism Books
ISBN: 9781954218291
Originally published in 1976, this poetry collection “asks how poetry can document lived experience while dialoguing with the Petrarchan sonnet tradition.”
Don’t Hide the Madness by Nhã Thuyên
Translated from the Vietnamese by Kaitlin Rees
Ugly Duckling Presse | May 1, 2025
Distributor: Asterism Books
ISBN: 9781946604279
In this poetry collection, “the language of madness, like the language of dream, offers a possibility of going on.”
Nonfiction
Translated from the German by Elisabeth Lauffer
New Vessel Press | December 20, 2024
Distributor: Consortium Book Sales & Distribution
ISBN: 9781954404281
In this book, Hilal “explores notions of repulsion and attraction, taking the reader into the most personal of realms to put self-image to the test. Why are we afraid of ugliness?”
A Thousand Thoughts in Flight by Maria Gabriela Llansol
Translated from the Portuguese by Audrey Young
Deep Vellum | July 16, 2024
Distributor: Consortium Book Sales & Distribution
ISBN: 9781646053056
This book features “a remarkable collection of diary entries from cross-genre Portuguese author Maria Gabriela Llansol, which span dozens of diaries and 33 years.”
