Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry Open Now: Translations Welcome

A $5,000 Pan-African poetry prize is now open for submissions:

The book prize — which has no entry fee — is run by the African Poetry Book Fund, in partnership with the literary journal Prairie Schooner. It’s designed to recognize African poetry written in English or translated into English, although the prize page makes no specific mention of how the translator is celebrated.

This year’s prize will be judged by South African poet Gabeba Baderoon.

To be eligible:

•  Books must be submitted in the year after their publication, which means that books published in 2014 must be submitted for consideration between May 1 and October 1, 2015.

• The 2015 contest is open to any book of original poetry, in English, published during 2014 in a standard edition by a full-length collection of poetry written by any African national, African resident, or poet of African parentage with roots from any country, living anywhere in the world. A standard edition is 48 pages or more in length.

• Books of translation are welcome and eligible for consideration for the prize.

• Self-published books are not eligible.

• Publishers may submit as many titles as they wish. The publisher should send four copies of each book to the Academy, postmarked between May 1 and October 1, 2015.

• There is no entry fee but an entry form is required for each title submitted. The winner will be announced in December.

You can: download the entry form here.

For instance: Maged Zaher’s If Reality Doesn’t Work Out should be eligible, and as soon as Robin Moger gets around to his Mohab Nasr collection, that should be eligible. Someone should’ve translated Iman Mersal’s Until I Give Up the Idea of Houses, but I guess not yet? After The Selected Poems of Abdellatif Laâbi, trans. André Naffis-Sahely,  is published by Archipelago in March 2016, that can go in. Ditto Mohamed Nedali’s Morceaux de choix: les amours d’un apprenti boucher, also trans. Naffis-Sahely.

What else?