The 2015 National Translation Award’s twelve-book poetry longlist was announced last night, and Kareem James Abu-Zeid’s translation of Nothing More to Lose, by Najwan Darwish, was on the list:
This year’s NTA. which is administered by the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA), features four titles from the French, two from German, and one each from Italian, Arabic, Swedish, Russian, Latin, and Hebrew. A prose longlist will also be announced: This is the first year for ALTA to award separate prizes in poetry and prose.
According to a news release, this in the only “national award for translated fiction, poetry, and literary nonfiction that includes a rigorous examination of the source text and its relation to the finished English work.”
This year’s judges for poetry are Lisa Rose Bradford, Stephen Kessler, and Diana Thow.
The winners of the $5,000 award will be announced at ALTA’s annual conference, which will be held this year in Tuscon, Arizona, Oct. 28–31. Five-title shortlists will be announced the month before the conference, in September. Between now and then, ALTA promises to “highlight each book on the longlist with features written by the judges, on the ALTA blog.”
The Complete 2015 NTA Longlist in Poetry:
by Jose Acquelin
Translated from the French by Hugh Hazelton
(Guernica Editions)
by Maria Attanasio
Translated from the Italian by Carla Billitteri
(Litmus Press)
by Paul Celan
Translated from the German by Pierre Joris
(Farrar Straus and Giroux)
by Najwan Darwish
Translated from the Arabic by Karreem James Abu-Zeid
(New York Review Books)
by Suzanne Doppelt
Translated from the French by Cole Swensen
(Litmus Press)
Translated from the Swedish by Roger Greenwald
(Black Widow Press)
Translated from the Russian by Peter France
(New Directions)
by Ernst Meister
Translated from the German by Graham Foust and Samuel Frederick
(Wave Books)
by Emmanuel Merle
Translated from the French by Peter Brown
(Guernica Editions)
by Ovid
Translated from the Latin by Julia Dyson Hejduk
(University of Wisconsin Press)
by Tuvia Ruebner
Translated from the Hebrew by Rachel Tzvia Back
(University of Pittsburgh Press)
by José-Flore Tappy
Translated from the French by John Taylor
(The Bitter Oleander Press)
