Michael Biggins named 2015 Janko Lavrin Laureate

Submitted by Caroli Leiman on

The Society of Slovene Literary Translators has named UW affiliate professor and Slavic librarian Michael Biggins as the recipient of its annual Janko Lavrin Prize, awarded each year for lifetime distinguished contributions to furthering Slovene literature abroad.  Biggins is the translator of more than fifteen major, book-length works of 20th- and 21st-century Slovene literature.

The public award ceremony will be held on June 11, 2015, at 8:00pm in the Štih auditorium of the Cankar Arts Center (Cankarjev dom), Prešeren Street 10, Ljubljana.

The award is named for Janko Lavrin (1887-1986), a Slovene-born scholar of Russian and Slavic literatures who became prominent in Great 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.

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