Jen Calleja

Genres: Autofiction | Memoir

Jen Calleja is a poet, writer and essayist who has been widely published, including in The White Review, The London Magazine, and Best British Short Stories (Salt). She was awarded an Authors’ Foundation Grant from the Society of Authors to work on her debut novel Vehicle (Prototype, 2023), an excerpt of which was shortlisted for the Short Fiction/ University of Essex Prize. Jen’s short story collection I’m Afraid That’s All We’ve Got Time For was published by Prototype in 2020, and Goblinhood: Goblin as a Mode was published by Rough Trade Books in 2024.

Jen has been shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize and the Schlegel-Tieck Prize as a literary translator from German into English and was the inaugural Translator in Residence at the British Library. Jen is co-founding editor of Praspar Press and played and toured in the DIY punk band Sauna Youth. Fair: The Life-Art of Translation was published by Prototype in May 2026 and an excerpt from it was longlisted for the Ivan Juritz Prize for Experimentation in Text. 

©Jorge Antony Stride
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Creative Places West Cork Islands
Irish Examiner
Maritime Hotel