On October 26th, the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) announced the winners of the 25th National Translation Awards. The NTAs are awarded, in both poetry and prose, to “literary translators who have made an outstanding contribution to literature in English by masterfully recreating the artistic force of a book of consummate quality.” The winning translators have been awarded $4,000 each.
This year’s prose judges are Philip Boehm, Shelley Fairweather-Vega, Will Forrester, Joon-Li Kim, and poupeh missaghi. The poetry judges are Kazim Ali, Ronnie Apter, and Mary Jo Bang. Congratulations to the winners!
Winner of the 2023 National Translation Award in Poetry:
Pierre Alferi, And the Street
Translated from French by Cole Swensen
(Green Linden Press)
Judges’ Citation: Pierre Alferi, who recently passed away, was a major figure in contemporary French experimental poetry. A scholar of medieval literature, Alferi’s work is deeply informed by Postmodern critical theory as well as the lyrical traditions of both English and French poetry. The short fractured lyrics of And the Street capture the velocity and intensity of contemporary life, which somehow slowing time and attention to the smaller and often ignored moments that make up quotidian lives. The son of a philosopher and a psychoanalyst, Alferi’s work in And the Street marries the deep inner life with the phenomena of the material world.
Winner of the 2023 National Translation Award in Prose:
Marosia Castaldi, The Hunger of Women
Translated from Italian by Jamie Richards
(And Other Stories)
Judges’ Citation: The Hunger of Women seamlessly defies literary conventions to tell the story of an unconventional narrator who holds the wisdoms of ages passed on to her through food and the female body. Castaldi, through Richards, invites us to a landscape of the everyday, to be and become with a woman who offers us “the miracle of the host.” In this feast of words and rhythms, we, addressed as Reader, find ourselves, in intimacy with a life in motion, experiencing an insatiable desire for tastes on our tongues and touches on our skin.
