PEN America (which appears to be the new name of the PEN American Center, not to be confused with the California-based PEN USA) has just announced the winners of its 2016 translation awards.
I’m delighted to see that the PEN Translation Prize ($3,000, for a book-length translation of prose into English published in 2015) has gone to a newcomer on the scene whose first book just happened to be the enormous and difficult The Complete Stories by Clarice Lispector (translated from the Portuguese and published by New Directions). Big congratulations, Katrina Dodson! The judges for this year’s prize were Elisabeth Jaquette, Aviya Kushner, Ronald Meyer, Sara Nović, & Jeffrey Zuckerman. You can read an excerpt online here.
The PEN Award for Poetry in Translation ($3,000, for a book-length translation of poetry into English published in 2015), judged this year by Urayoán Noel, has gone to Sawako Nakayasu for The Collected Poems of Chika Sagawa, translated from the Japanese and published by Canarium Books. I’ve been hearing great things about this book too. Excerpt here.
Finally, the PEN/Edward and Lily Tuck Award for Paraguayan Literature. This is a $3000 award that goes one year to a living author of a major work of Paraguayan literature, and to a translator the next. This year it’s the author’s turn, and the prize, judged by Ezra E. Fitz, Amalia Gladhart, and Mark Weiss, goes to Doce Lunas Llenas for Poesias sobre la Divina Energia Femenina. Next year it’ll be a translator’s turn for this one again.
For a complete list of PEN’s 2016 literary awards, visit the PEN website.
Big congratulations to this year’s honorees!