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Indian-origin writer Rohan Chhetri wins Armory Square Prize
Chhetri received the 2026 award for his translation of Parijat’s classic Nepali novel Flowers of the Siris Tree.
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Ankita Baidya - Wed, 10, Jun 2026
- 05:56 EDT
- 50
Indian origin poet and translator Rohan Chhetri won the 2026 Armory Square Prize. / @rohancht/X
Indian Nepali poet and translator Rohan Chhetri has won the 2026 Armory Square Prize for South Asian Literature in Translation for his English translation of Parijat’s acclaimed Nepali novel Flowers of the Siris Tree.
The award was announced on June 8 during an event co-hosted with Himal Southasian’s annual Fiction Fest. The annual prize supports literary translators working with South Asian languages and seeks to increase the visibility of South Asian literature in the United States.
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This year’s theme focused on retranslations of works published after 1930, aiming to bring renewed attention to modern South Asian literary classics.
Chhetri’s winning translation is based on Shirishko Phool, the landmark 1964 Nepali novel by Parijat, one of Nepal’s most celebrated literary figures and the first woman to receive the country’s prestigious Madan Puraskar award.
In its citation, the jury described the novel as “brutal and brutally perceptive,” praising Chhetri’s translation for meeting the challenge of carrying the emotional and psychological depth of the original text into English.
“Translating it with sufficient sensitivity and elegance will be a challenge of the first order, one Chhetri is meeting admirably,” the jury said.
The winning book will be published by Open Letter Books in 2028, while excerpts from all shortlisted works will appear in Words Without Borders, an online literary publication focused on international writing in translation.
Chhetri, who identifies as a Nepali-Indian writer from the Nepali-speaking community of West Bengal, grew up in the Dooars region and completed his schooling in Kalimpong.
Currently based in Houston, he is pursuing a Ph.D. in literature and creative writing at the University of Houston.
Over the past decade, Chhetri has emerged as a prominent voice in contemporary South Asian poetry and translation. His poetry collection Lost, Hurt, or in Transit Beautiful won the 2018 Kundiman Poetry Prize and was later published in both the United States and India.
His earlier collection Slow Startle received the Emerging Poets Prize in 2015, while his chapbook Jurassic Desire won the Per Diem Prize in 2017.
Chhetri has also received a PEN/Heim Grant for translation and has translated works by several Nepali-language writers, including poet Avinash Shrestha.
His poetry and essays have appeared in publications including The Paris Review, AGNI, New England Review and The Antigonish Review.
The Armory Square Prize was established to address the underrepresentation of South Asian languages in the American publishing industry.
According to the organizers, fewer than 1 percent of translated books published in the United States over the past decade originated from a South Asian language, despite those languages being spoken by nearly one-fifth of the global population.
This year’s finalists included translations from Hindi, Bangla and Nepali, reflecting the linguistic diversity of South Asian literature and the growing international interest in literary translation from the region.
Discover more at New India Abroad.
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