The Society of Slovene Literary Translators has named affiliate professor and Slavic librarian Michael Biggins as the recipient of the Janko Lavrin Prize (http://www NULL.dskp-drustvo NULL.si/index NULL.php/nagrade/lavrinova-diploma). The prize is awarded annually to honour an individual who has made a significant contribution to the translation of Slovene literature internationally. Michael Biggins is the English translator of more than fifteen major, book-length works of 20th– and 21st-century Slovene literature, including texts by Drago Jančar, Tomaž Šalamun and Vladimir Bartol.

The award ceremony was held on 11 June 2015 in the Štih auditorium of the Cankar Arts Center in Ljubljana, Slovenia’s most important cultural centre. It began with ten distinguished Slovene translators presenting their most recent translations. Later, Michael Biggins shared his experiences of a liftetime’s engagement with Slovene literature.

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Michael Biggins

The award is named in honour of Janko Lavrin (1887-1986), a Slovene-born scholar of Russian and Slavic literatures, who came to prominece in Britain in the 1930s and ’40s as the host of BBC radio programs devoted to Russian literature. Lavrin taught Russian and Slovene at the University of Nottingham, where he founded Britain’s only program in Slovene studies, which remains active today.