Sasha Dugdale

Sasha Dugdale FRSL is a British poet, playwright, editor and translator.

She has written five poetry collections and is a translator of Russian literature.

Sasha Dugdale was born in 1974 in Sussex.

Between 1995 and 2000, Dugdale worked for the British Council in Russia.

Dugdale has published five poetry collections with Carcanet Press: Notebook (2003), The Estate (2007), Red House (2011), Joy (2017) and Deformations (2020).

From 2012 to 2017 Dugdale was the editor of Modern Poetry in Translation, publishing sixteen issues of the magazine as well as its fiftieth year anniversary anthology Centres of Cataclysm (Bloodaxe, 2016).

From 2015 to 2021 Dugdale directed the biennial Winchester Poetry Festival.

Dugdale's poetry has been featured in the Guardian and her translation of Maria Stepanova's novel In Memory of Memory was shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize, the 2022 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize, the 2022 James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and in 2021 was longlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature.

She won the 2016 Forward Poetry Prize for Best Single Poem, entitled Joy, and a Cholmondeley Award in 2017.

Dugdale specialises in translating contemporary Russian women poets and post-Soviet new writing for theatre.

She has worked both in the United Kingdom and the United States on a number of productions, translating modern Russian plays.

Dugdale was poet-in-residence at St John’s College, Cambridge between 2018 and 2021, running a series of poetry circles, workshops and one-to-ones with students at the College, along with readings in partnership with the English Society.

In 2020, she won an English PEN Translates Award for her translation of a collection of poetry by the Russian poet Maria Stepanova.