ALTA, the American Literary Translators Association, has just announced the longlists for the 2015 National Translation Award, which for the first time this year has been split into prose and poetry categories. I’m very delighted to see that my translation of Jenny Erpenbeck’s The End of Days made the cut. Lots of other great books translated by colleagues I revere on these lists as well. The shortlist will be published in September, and the winners announced in October at the annual ALTA Conference in Tuscon, AZ. Enjoy the lists! They come just in time to pack your beach bag with some pleasurable summer reading.
The 2015 NTA Longlist in Poetry
The Absolute Is a Round Die by Jose Acquelin (Canada)
Translated from the French by Hugh Hazelton (Guernica Editions)
Amnesia of the Movement of Clouds & Of Red and Black Verse by Maria Attanasio (Italy)
Translated from the Italian by Carla Billitteri (Litmus Press)
Breathturn into Timestead by Paul Celan (Romania)
Translated from the German by Pierre Joris (Farrar Straus and Giroux)
Nothing More to Lose by Najwan Darwish (Palestine)
Translated from the Arabic by Kareem James Abu-Zeid (New York Review Books)
Lazy Suzie by Suzanne Doppelt (France)
Translated from the French by Cole Swensen (Litmus Press)
Guarding the Air: Selected Poems of Gunnar Harding by Gunnar Harding (Sweden)
Translated from the Swedish by Roger Greenwald (Black Widow Press)
Poems of Osip Mandelstam by Osip Mandelstam (Russia)
Translated from the Russian by Peter France (New Directions)
Wallless Space by Ernst Meister (Germany)
Translated from the German by Graham Foust and Samuel Frederick (Wave Books)
Elsewhere on Earth by Emmanuel Merle (France)
Translated from the French by Peter Brown (Guernica Editions)
The Offense of Love: Ars Amatoria, Remedia Amoris, and Tristia 2 by Ovid (Rome)
Translated from the Latin by Julia Dyson Hejduk (University of Wisconsin Press)
In the Illuminated Dark: Selected Poems of Tuvia Ruebner by Tuvia Ruebner (Slovakia)
Translated from the Hebrew by Rachel Tzvia Back (University of Pittsburgh Press)
Sheds/Hangars by José-Flore Tappy (Switzerland)
Translated from the French by John Taylor (The Bitter Oleander Press)
The 2015 NTA Longlist in Prose
Conversations by Cesar Aira (Argentina)
Translated from the Spanish by Katherine Silver (New Directions)
New Waw, Saharan Oasis by Ibrahim al-Koni (Libya)
Translated from the Arabic by William M. Hutchins (Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at Austin)
Street of Thieves by Mathias Enard (France)
Translated from the French by Charlotte Mandell (Open Letter Books)
End of Days by Jenny Erpenbeck (Germany)
Translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky (New Directions)
The Woman Who Borrowed Memories by Tove Jansson (Finland)
Translated from the Swedish by Thomas Teal & Silvester Mazzarella (New York Review Books)
The Mad and the Bad by Jean-Patrick Manchette (France)
Translated from the French by Donald Nicholson-Smith (New York Review Books)
Why I Killed My Best Friend by Amanda Michalopoulou (Greece)
Translated from the Greek by Karen Emmerich (Open Letter Books)
This Is the Garden by Giulio Mozzi (Italy)
Translated from the Italian by Elizabeth Harris (Open Letter Books)
La Grande by Juan Jose Saer (Argentia)
Translated from the Spanish by Steve Dolph (Open Letter Books)
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (Russia)
Translated from the Russian by Marian Schwartz (Yale University Press)
The Last Lover by Can Xue (China)
Translated from the Chinese by Annelise F. Wasmoen (Yale University Press)
Running Through Beijing by Xu Zechen (China)
Translated from the Chinese by Eric Abrahamsen (Two Lines Press)
For more information about the longlisted books and the NTA itself, see the official poetry and prose longlists on the ALTA website.