Sasha Dugdale was editor of Modern Poetry in Translation from 2013 to 2017, and is co-editor of the anthology Centres of Cataclysm: Celebrating Fifty Years of Modern Poetry in Translation (Bloodaxe Books/MPT, 2016). She has translated many works of Russian poetry, prose and drama, including Tatiana Shcherbina's Life Without: Selected Poetry & Prose 1992-2003 (Bloodaxe Books, 2004), Elena Shvarts’s Birdsong on the Seabed (Bloodaxe Books, 2008), Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard (BBC Radio 3, 2008), and the short story collection Moscow Tales (Oxford University Press, 2013), and has published five poetry collections with Oxford/Carcanet, The Estate (2007), Notebook (2003), Red House (2011), Joy (2017), and Deformations (2020), which was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. Her translation of Elena Shvarts' Birdsong on the Seabed was shortlisted for both the Rossica Translation Prize and the Corneliu M. Popescu Award for European Poetry in Translation. She won the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem in 2016, and received a Cholmondeley Award in 2017. Her translation of Maria Stepanova's War of the Beasts and the Animals (Bloodaxe Books, 2021) was a Poetry Book Society Translation Choice and was shortlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation 2021. Her translation of Stepanova's memoir In Memory of Memory was also published in 2021 – from Fitzcarraldo in the UK and New Directions in the US. In 2023 Maria Stepanova was awarded the Berman Literature Prize for In Memory of Memory. It was also shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize, the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation 2021, and the 2022 James Tait Black Prize for Biography. Her translation of Maria Stepanova's book-length poem Holy Winter 20/21 was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2024. It was a Poetry Book Society Translation Choice for Spring 2024, and was longlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation 2024. The American edition from New Directions is on the longlist for the Barrios Book in Translation Prize (2024 NBCC Awards).
Sasha has also worked as a consultant for the Royal Court Theatre and other companies in addition to writing her own plays, and from 1995 to 2000 worked for the British Council in Russia. She stepped down from her role as co-director of the Winchester Poetry Festival in October 2021. She lives in Sussex.
