2025 National Endowment for the Arts Translation Grant

January 14, 2025
For Immediate Release

Larissa Kyzer Receives National Endowment for the Arts Literature Translation Fellowship

Fellowship will support the translation of

The Chill of the April Sun (Something Really Special) by Elísabet Jökulsdóttir

into English from Icelandic. 

[Brooklyn, NY]—Today, the National Endowment for the Arts announced that Larissa Kyzer is one of 22 translators selected to receive a Literature Translation Fellowship of $10,000. This fellowship will support the translation of The Chill of the April Sun (Something Really Special) into English. In total, the NEA will award $325,000 in grants to support the translation into English of works written in 17 different languages from 21 countries.

NEA Director of Literary Arts Amy Stolls said, “The National Endowment for the Arts’ continued investment in contemporary translators preserves, strengthens, and advances our nation’s rich literary traditions. This new group of fellows is the latest in a longstanding legacy of support for translators of poetry and prose who—through the beauty and power of their words—inspire us, challenge us, and open our eyes to the important voices from countries around the world.”

Since 1981, the NEA has awarded more than 600 fellowships to 538 literary translators, with translations representing 82 languages and 93 countries. Visit arts.gov to browse bios and project descriptions from all of the 2025 recipients and past Literature Translation Fellows.

About the Project:

The Chill of the April Sun is a work of autobiographical fiction based heavily on author Elísabet Jökulsdóttir's real-life experiences from April 1978 to September 1979. During this 17-month period, 20-year-old Védís (a stand-in for the author) loses her estranged father, suffers a nervous breakdown, falls into a passionate but toxic relationship with a young man who dallies with substance abuse, forms her own dependency on alcohol and drugs, develops bipolar disorder, and works at the very mental health facility where she herself will be institutionalized in a matter of months.

Even with its nomination for the prestigious and high-profile Nordic Council Literature Award, The Chill of the April Sun has still only been translated into Danish, Swedish, and Polish. A smattering of her poems have been translated into French, German, and Polish, but her prose remains almost completely untranslated. In English, her oeuvre is limited to a handful of hard-to-locate pieces of flash fiction/prose poetry, as well as two unpublished plays. Of the ten short English translations that exist of Elísabet’s work, Larissa has translated five: three pieces of flash fiction and two microplays. Larissa also moderated an online conversation with Elísabet for Scandinavia House when The Chill of the April Sun was nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize.

Translator’s Personal Statement:

So many conversations about literature these days seem to be lamenting its imminent demise. I won’t litigate that here, but I will say that if literature is dying, then what I want more than anything on its way out are books that inspire me with their aesthetic weirdness and formal audacity, that tickle my ear and my funny bone, that taste fresh in my mouth when I read them aloud, that tell me something I didn’t know about the world. I want books that are fun to read and joyful in their possibilities, if not necessarily their content. The Chill of the April Sun is just such a work.

I often say that a good translator can translate almost anything, and I believe that. But if you don’t connect with the work you’re translating, it feels like putting on a wet sweater. The Chill of the April Sun is a sweater I love to wear. Language that I enjoy living in. It is intentionally simple but has fantastic rhythm and repetition and flow.  

Elísabet allows her narrative to be guided by her trains of thought, and places as much faith in emotional truth as literal chronology. She eschews the traditional linearity of autobiography/fiction and steps outside of her narrative. She shirks the “rules” of fiction, finds fresh ways to break the fourth wall. April Sun is written in the third person, but periodically slips into the first, so that she can better reflect on significant events or details. The novel is set in the past, but frequently jumps forward in time, looks to a future beyond the confines of the story as if to reassure both author and reader that Védís/Elísabet is going to be okay—she is going to have a full life, even if the book ends on the cusp of her recovery. She is going to survive.

Bringing this work into English is also important because we need more books about mental health issues written by people who experience them. Reading such work is enlightening, demystifying, and humanizing. Elísabet’s candor about her struggles with bipolar 1 kickstarted long-overdue conversations about mental health(care) in Iceland. These are conversations we still need to have in the US.

I’m honored and grateful to receive this grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and thrilled to bring such a richly deserving author into English for the first time.

Author Bio:

Feminist icon and one of Iceland’s last real bohemians, Elísabet Jökulsdóttir has published over 30 works, including fiction, children’s literature, poetry, and plays. She’s a two-time recipient of the Fjöruverðlaun literary prize and a two-time nominee for the Nordic Council Literary Prize, most recently for The Chill of the April Sun, which also won the Icelandic Literature Prize. In 2016, Elísabet ran for president, a largely ceremonial position, on a platform of environmental protection, mental health, and empathy. In 2023, she successfully campaigned to have a street named for her; you’ll find Elísabetarstígur on the west side of Reykjavík.

Translator Bio:

Larissa Kyzer is a writer and Icelandic to English literary translator. Her translation of Kristín Eiríksdóttir’s A Fist or a Heart was awarded the American Scandinavian Foundation’s 2019 translation prize. The same year, she was one of Princeton’s Translators in Residence. Larissa’s translation work centers around contemporary authors and poets, focusing on emerging, exophonic, and women writers. She’s translated dozens of contemporary Icelandic authors, including Fríða Ísberg (The Mark), Sigríður Hagalín Björnsdóttir (The Fires), and Steinunn G. Helgadóttir (StrongestWoman in the World; forthcoming). Larissa has received grant funding and support from the European Union Prize for Literature, the Fulbright Commission, the Icelandic Ministry of Education and Culture, the Icelandic Literature Center, and Finland’s Kone Foundation. She is on the board of the American Literary Translators Association, a member of the Translators Organizing Committee, and runs the virtual Women+ in Translation reading series Jill!

Rights Contact and Additional Information:

World English rights are available for The Chill of the April Sun. Inquiries can be directed to the Reykjavík Literary Agency.