John Florio Prize

The John Florio Prize for Italian translation is awarded by the Society of Authors,
with the co-sponsorship of the Italian Cultural Institute and Arts Council England. Named after the Tudor Anglo-Italian writer-translator John Florio, the prize was established in 1963. As of 1980 it is awarded biannually for the best English translation of a full-length work of literary merit and general interest from Italian.

WWW Official Site

Winners and shortlistees

2006–present biennial winners, runners-up, and shortlisted works

= winner

Year	Writer	Work	Result	Reference
2006	Carol O’Sullivan and Martin Thom	Kuraj by Silvia Di Natale	Winner
2006	Aubrey Botsford	The Ballad of the Low Lifes by Enrico Remmert	Runner-up
2008	Peter Robinson	The Greener Meadow by Luciano Erba	Winner
2008	Alastair McEwen	Turning Back the Clock by Umberto Eco	Runner-up
2010	Jamie McKendrick	The Embrace: Selected Poems by Valerio Magrelli	Winner
2010	Abigail Asher	The Natural Order of Things by Andrea Canobbio	Runner-up
2012	Anne Milano Appel	Scent of a Woman by Giovanni Arpino	Winner
2012	Howard Curtis	In the Sea There are Crocodiles by Fabio Geda	Commended
2012	Shaun Whiteside	Stabat Mater by Tiziano Scarpa	Commended
2014	Patrick Creagh	Memory of the Abyss by Marcello Fois	Winner
2014	Cristina Viti	A Life Apart by Mariapia Veladiano	Commended
2016	Jamie McKendrick	Archipelago by Antonella Anedda	Winner
2016	Richard Dixon	Numero Zero by Umberto Eco	Commended
2018	Gini Alhadeff	I Am the Brother of XX by Fleur Jaeggy	Winner
2018	Cristina Viti	Stigmata by Gëzim Hajdari	Runner-up
2018	Jamie McKendrick	Within the Walls by Giorgio Bassani	Shortlisted
2018	Mario Petrucci	Xenia by Eugenio Montale	Shortlisted
2018	Cristina Viti	The World Saved by Kids by Elsa Morante	Shortlisted
2020	Jhumpa Lahiri	Trick by Domenico Starnone	Winner
2020	Jenny McPhee	The Kremlin Ball by Curzio Malaparte	Runner-up
2020	Anne Milano Appel	A Devil Comes to Town by Paolo Maurensig	Shortlisted
2020	Ekin Oklap	Flowers Over the Inferno by Ilaria Tuti	Shortlisted
2020	Taije Silverman and Marina Della Putta Johnson	Selected Poems of Giovanni Pascoli by Giovanni Pascoli	Shortlisted
2020	Howard Curtis	Soul of the Border by Matteo Righetto	Shortlisted
2022	Nicholas Benson and Elena Coda	My Karst and My City by Scipio Slataper	Winner
2022	J Ockenden	Snow, Dog, Foot by Claudio Morandini	Runner-up
2022	Tim Parks	The House on The Hill and The Moon and the Bonfires by Cesare Pavese	Runner-up
2022	Elena Pala	The Hummingbird by Sandro Veronesi	Shortlisted
2022	Stash Luczkwi	Without Ever Reaching the Summit by Paolo Cognetti	Shortlisted
2022	Stephen Twilley	Diary of a Foreigner in Paris by Curzio Malaparte	Shortlisted

2024 judges

Maame Blue

Maame Blue is a creative writing tutor and author of the novel Bad Love, which won the 2021 Betty Trask award. Her short stories have been published in three anthologies and her writing has appeared in Writers Mosaic, Refinery29 and The Author Magazine. Her second novel The Rest Of You will be published by Amistad and Verve Books in Autumn 2024.

Jamie McKendrick

Jamie McKendrick was born in Liverpool in 1955. He is the author of six collections of poetry, including The Marble Fly, winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection and a Poetry Book Society Choice; Ink Stone, shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Whitbread Poetry Award; and Crocodiles & Obelisks, shortlisted for the Forward Prize. Out There won the Hawthornden Prize. An earlier selection of his poems was published as Sky Nails, and he is editor of 20th-Century Italian Poems. The Embrace, his translations of Valerio Magrelli’s poetry, won the Oxford-Weidenfeld and the John Florio prizes.

Sandra Silipo

Sandra Silipo has been studying and working with languages for over 30 years. She has a BA in Classics, an MA in Translation and an MA in Applied Linguistics. She has worked for the language industry in a variety of roles: as an associate lecturer and author for the Open University, as a free-lance translator, as a principal examiner for the IBO, as a language teacher and as a teachers’ trainer. Her profession has taught her that every word and every language tells a story. She loves to spend her time listening to those stories, and retelling them.