The Polish Book Institute, the Polish Cultural Institute London (PCI London) and the Polish Cultural Institute New York (PCI New York) are delighted to announce that Ursula Phillips has been awarded the 2026 Found in Translation Award (FiTA) for her translation of Ice by Jacek Dukaj, which was published last year by Head of Zeus in the UK.

This year’s jury consisted of Grzegorz Jankowicz, director of the Polish Book Institute, as well as Anna Tryc-Bromley, director of the PCI London, Małgorzata Szum, deputy director of the PCI New York and Mira Rosenthal, winner of last year’s FiTA.

Grzegorz Jankowicz commented on Ursula Phillips being awarded FiTA by saying the following: “Ursula Phillips has worked on the translation of Jacek Dukaj’s novel Ice for nearly a decade. The scale of this translation challenge was monumental, in fact quite incomparable to anything else. This is a truly exceptional book, with a complex narrative and linguistic structure, filled with neologisms for which the translator had to find solutions in English. Thanks to Phillips’ talent, experience and persistence, Dukaj’s remarkable novel has found a suitable, inspiring literary form in English.”

This is the second time Ursula Phillips receives this award, after winning Found in Translation Award in 2015 for her translation of Zofia Nałkowska’s Choucas (Northern Illinois University Press).

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Ursula Philiips is a Honorary Research Associate of the University College London School of Slavonic and East European Studies with degrees in Russian from the University of Durham and Polish from the University of London, as well as a PhD from the Institute for Literary Research, Polish Academy of Sciences. In 2008 she published a monograph in Polish on Narcyza Żmichowska’s writing. She was editor of Polish Literature in Transformation (2013) as well as co-editor of several volumes of essays on women authors, including Women’s Voices and Feminism in Polish Cultural Memory (with Urszula Chowaniec, 2012). She is on the editorial board of Slavonic and East European Review and publishes studies on Polish literature in British scholarly periodicals. Among her translations are Wiesław Myśliwski’s Palace, Grażyna Borkowska’s Alienated Women: A Study on Polish Women’s Fiction 1845-1918, Maria Wirtemberska’s Malvina, or The Heart’s Intuition, Narcyza Żmichowska’s The Heathen, Zofia Nałkowska’s Choucas (Found in Translation Award 2015) and Boundary (Wacław Lednicki Humanities Award 2017), short stories by Agnieszka Taborska and Piotr Paziński, as well as Grzegorz Niziołek’s The Polish Theatre of the Holocaust.

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Previously awarded:

2008 – Bill Johnston for his translation of New Poems by Tadeusz Różewicz, Archipelago Books, 2007;
2009 – Antonia Lloyd-Jones for her translation of The Last Supper by Pawel Huelle, Serpent’s Tail, 2008;
2010 – Danuta Borchardt for her translation of Pornografia by Witold Gombrowicz, Grove Press, 2009;
2011 – Clare Cavanagh & Stanislaw Barańczak for their translation of Here by Wisława Szymborska, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010;
2012 – Joanna Trzeciak for her translation of Sobbing Superpower by Tadeusz Rózewicz, W. W. Norton & Company, 2011;
2013 – Antonia Lloyd-Jones for the entire work of translations in 2012;
2014 – Philip Boehm for his translation of Chasing the King of Hearts by Hanna Krall, Peirene Press, 2013;
2015 – Ursula Phillips for her translation of Choucas by Zofia Nalkowska, Northern Illinois University Press, 2014;
2016 – Bill Johnston for his translation of Twelve Stations by Tomasz Rózycki, Zephyr Press, 2015;
2017 – Piotr Florczyk for his translation of Building the Barricade by Anna Świrszczyńska, Tavern Books, 2016;
2018 – Jennifer Croft for her translation of Flights by Olga Tokarczuk, Fitzcarraldo Editions (UK) and Riverhead Books (US), 2017;
2019 – Madeline G. Levine for her translation of Collected Stories by Brunon Schulz, Northwestern University Press, 2018;
2020 – Anna Zaranko for her translation of The Memoir of an Anti-hero by Kornel Filipowicz, Penguin Modern Classics, 2019;
2021 – Ewa Malachowska-Pasek and Megan Thomas for their translation of The Career of Nicodemus Dyzma by Tadeusz Dolęga-Mostowicz, Northwestern University Press, 2020;
2022 – Jennifer Croft for her translation of The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk, Fitzcarraldo Editions (UK) 2021, Riverhead Books (US), 2022;
2023 – Anna Zaranko for her translation of The Peasants by Władysław Reymont, Penguin Classics, 2022;
2024 – Alissa Valles for her translation of Firebird by Zuzanna Ginczanka, The New York Review of Books, 2023;

2025 – Mira Rosenthal for her translation of To the Letter by Tomasz Różycki, Archipelago Books, 2024.

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About Found in Translation Award

The award was established in 2008. It is given every year to an author/authors of the best translation of Polish literature into English that was published in book form in the previous calendar year. The award is a one-month residency stay in Kraków, Poland with a monthly stipend of 2,000 PLN, a flight to and from Kraków and a prize of 16,000 PLN.

The award is given by a jury consisting of representatives of the Polish Book Institute Warsaw / Kraków, the Polish Cultural Institute London, and the Polish Cultural Institute New York, as well as translators, the winners of its two previous editions.

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More information about the award: Maria Rutkowska

e-mail: m.rutkowska@instytutksiazki.pl with FOUND IN TRANSLATION AWARD in the subject line

To find out more about “Ice” by Jacek Dukaj, the monumental novel translated by Ursula Phillips, see here:

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/ice-9781786697288