Launching: The Mozhi Prize 2025

About the competition:

The Mozhi Prize is a literary fiction translation prize awarded for the translation of short stories from an Indian language into English. Through this prize, we seek to provide a platform for emerging translators with a passion for the craft. We also hope to bring attention to the wealth of literature in Indian languages and the art of fiction translation.

Over its first three editions, the Mozhi Prize has received over 400 submissions from across 18 different source languages. Our impressions on the previous editions are recorded in our notes from the respective years. It gives us immense joy to note that many of our shortlisted translators have gone on to work on book-length projects and win other prestigious awards.

We immensely value the curatorial pursuit of the translator and therefore continue to place emphasis on the aesthetic quality of the story, aside of the quality of the translation. We therefore invite participants to choose stories that are fresh, inventive and questful.

We look forward to reading the submissions!

Who can apply:

• Individuals or a team of not more than two translators can apply. There is no age limit.
• This initiative is aimed at discovering emerging translators and hence we ask that you should have published no more than one book-length translation as of the date of submitting your entry. If you have been published in any other form, or are yet to publish, you are welcome to apply.
• We require the translator to be an Indian tax resident. Unfortunately, we are no longer able to accept translations from others due to administrative constraints with respect to payment of prize monies.
• We request winners of the top three prizes from previous editions of the Mozhi Prize to kindly refrain from participating.

Panel of judges:

Janice Pariat is the author of Boats on Land: A Collection of Short Stories, the novels Seahorse, The Nine Chambered-Heart, and Everything The Light Touches. Originally written in English, her works have been translated into ten languages including Italian, Spanish, French, and German. She was awarded the Young Writer Award from the Sahitya Akademi and the Crossword Book Award for Fiction in 2013.  Her novel Everything the Light Touches was included in The New Yorker’s list of Best Books of 2022, and awarded the Auther Award for Best Fiction, the Sushila Devi Award, the Pen and Paper Fiction Award and the Atta Galatta Bangalore Literature Festival Book Prize. In 2014, she was the Charles Wallace Creative Writing Fellow at the University of Kent, UK, and a Writer in Residence at the TOJI Residency in South Korea in 2019. In Fall 2024, Janice was a resident at the Rockefeller Foundation Centre at Bellagio, Italy. Currently, she teaches Creative Writing and Art History at Ashoka University and lives between Shillong and New Delhi with a cat of many names.

Abdul Rasheed is a versatile writer, poet, editor, translator, and blogger who writes in Kannada. Hailing from Coorg and educated in Mysore, he has had a dynamic career with All India Radio, serving in Mangalore, Shillong, Mysore, Madikeri, Gulbarga, and Lakshadweep. A prolific writer, Rasheed’s fiction and non-fiction are celebrated for their vibrant imagination, poetic style, and use of fresh idioms. His contributions to literature have earned him numerous prestigious accolades, including the Central Sahitya Akademi Golden Jubilee Award, Karnataka Sahitya Akademi Award, B.H. Shridhar Award, Vardhamana Award, and Lankesh Award. His works have been translated into several languages, including English, German, Hindi, and Malayalam, extending his reach beyond Kannada-speaking audiences.Rasheed also serves as the Honorary Editor for the acclaimed online magazine Kendasampige, further cementing his influence in Kannada literary circles. His multifaceted contributions as a writer, editor, and broadcaster have made him a prominent voice in contemporary Indian literature.

Arunava Sinha translates classic, modern and contemporary Bengali fiction and nonfiction into English, and English fiction, non-fiction and poetry into Bengali. He also translates from Hindi into English and Bengali. Ninety-six of his translations have been published so far. Twice the winner of the Crossword translation award, winner of the Muse India translation award, and the winner of the Kalinga Literary Festival Book Award for translation (2025), he has also been shortlisted for The Independent Foreign Fiction prize (2009), the Global Literature in Libraries Initiative Translated YA Book Prize, the 2021 National Translation Award in the USA, the Miles Franklin Literary Award, and The Stella Prize in Australia in 2024. Besides India, his translations have been published in the UK, the US, and Australia in English, and in several European and Asian countries through further translation. He is a professor of the practice in the Creative Writing department at Ashoka University, and Co-Director, Ashoka Centre of Translation.

What to translate:

• Any short story originally published in/after 2000 written in a non-English Indian language.
• The translator needs to have obtained permission from the rights holder to translate and publish the work. Mozhi reserves the first right to publish the translation, on its website, and/or in book form. You may find a sample rights letter here.
• Word count in English up to 7,000 words
• We do not accept self-translations.
• We allow re-translations of works that have already been translated with a justification for why it is being re-translated and what you are looking to do differently. 
• Please do not submit excerpts from novels / novellas, we are looking for a self-contained story within the word limit mentioned above. 
• Please submit only one story per entrant.
• The translation should not have been published anywhere else.
• The jury’s decisions will be final and binding.
• On grounds of fairness, we will not accept translations of stories written by any of the members on our jury or the founders at Mozhi.

Other information:

• Style: Translation should be as self-contained as possible; please avoid glossaries or footnotes unless absolutely necessary.
• Format of submission: Word document, 12pt, double spaced. Please mention the title of the story, the name of the author and your name on the first page.
• Selection criteria: Since our focus is on encouraging literary translation, the selection criteria will accord significant weightage to the literary/aesthetic quality of the story, apart from the quality of the translation itself. 
• Translation rights: We ask that you have obtained the translation rights from the rights holder prior to submission. You will be required to submit a signed rights statement at the time of submission.
• Publication: Mozhi will have the first rights to publish the shortlisted entries digitally and/or in print form. 

How to enter:

Please submit here.

Prizes:

1st Prize – INR 50,000

2nd Prize – INR 25,000

3rd Prize – INR 15,000

Prizes sponsored by The Mozhi Trust

Timelines:

Last date for submission: 15 September 2025, 11.59pm IST.

Winners to be announced: 31 December 2025

Please write to contact@mozhispaces.in if you have any questions. 

We look forward to your entries!

Team Mozhi