On Friday, May 2, Deep Vellum was one of hundreds of nonprofit arts organizations who received notice that our National Endowment for the Arts grant had been terminated by the Trump administration.
Our $20,000 NEA award this grant cycle was approved in January 2025, and was awarded to offset printing costs and compensate authors and translators for four titles to be published this calendar year. Those titles are:
Carapace Dancer, a trilingual poetry collection in English, Spanish, and Zapotec, by award-winning Mexican writer Natalia Toledo, translated by Clare Sullivan. This book published on January 21, 2025, and is available now.
Juvenilia, the North American poetry debut of New Zealand “literary phenomenon” Hera Lindsay Bird (—Elle). This book is set to publish on June 3, 2025. We still hope to bring Bird to the United States for a book tour this fall with support from the New Zealand government.
Schattenfroh, the 1,001 page German maximalist novel that has already taken the literary world by storm months before its publication, written by Michael Lentz and translated by Max Lawton. The book will be available on August 19, 2025.
The Ruins, a haunting and accessible collection by contemporary Chinese poet and architect Ye Hui, translated by Dong Li, who was awarded a PEN/Heim grant for the translation of this work. The book will be available on November 11, 2025.
The Trump administration may not think that these books are valuable and worth funding, but we sure do, and we're not giving up on them! Help us bring them to readers everywhere by ordering a bundle of all 4.
Note: Carapace Dancer will ship when you place your order, and you'll receive the other 3 titles as they're published.
Thank you for your support and for helping us achieve our mission to create global conversation through literature as a means to build cultural bridges, foster empathy among individuals and communities, and allow us to view life from other perspectives.