At the beginning of October, PEN American Center announced that the recently deceased Michael Henry Heim, 69, one of the world’s greatest translators and Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at U.C.L.A, was the ‘anonymous donor’ who created the PEN Translation Fund in 2003, with a gift of $734,000. Over the past nine years, the Fund has awarded over 100 grants to translators to help sustain new work and thereby encourage the publication of more translated works.

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Peter Godwin, president of PEN American Center, said that ‘the visionary generosity of Michael Heim, strongly supported by his wife, Priscilla, has created a legacy that recognizes the unique place of translators and translation in our literary life. He stood for that because he knew so well how translation serves us all by providing the key in our own language to all the world’s literature.’

For an obituary, please see the PEN website (http://www NULL.pen NULL.org/).