Chantal Wright was born in Manchester, England. She was an undergraduate at Girton College, Cambridge, and holds an MA and a PhD from the University of East Anglia. She translates literary and academic texts from German and French into English and is the author of Literary Translation (Routledge, 2016).

In 2012 Chantal Wright was awarded the inaugural Cliff Becker Book Prize in Translation for Tzveta Sofronieva’s collection of poetry A Hand Full of Water. She has twice been shortlisted for the Marsh Award for Children’s Literature in Translation: once in 2011 for Andreas Steinhöfel’s The Pasta Detectives, a book that was also awarded the 2011 NASEN Inclusive Children’s Book Award; and again in 2016 for Milena Baisch’s Anton and Piranha, which was also an IBBY 2016 UK Honour Book. Chantal Wright has been the recipient of an award from PEN American Center’s translation fund. Her work has appeared online in Words Without Borders and no man’s land and in print in Exile Quarterly, LIT, International Poetry Review and the Chicago Review. She is a former editor of Transcript.

From 2014 to 2022, Chantal Wright taught literary translation at the University of Warwick, where she founded The Warwick Prize for Women in Translation in 2017. In October 2022, Chantal Wright became Co-Director of the Institute for Translation and Interpreting at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences in Winterthur, Switzerland.

Click here to read an interview with Chantal Wright on the Authors and Translators blog and here to access the online companion resource to Literary Translation, ‘How to Get Started in Literary Translation’ on the Routledge website.

Chantal Wright is a member of the Translators Association.