September 5, 2024—The American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) announced today the longlists for the 2024 National Translation Awards (NTA) in Poetry and Prose. 2024 marks the 26th year for the NTA, and the 10th year to award separate prizes in poetry and prose. The shortlists for the NTA will be announced on October 10th, and the winners will be announced on October 26th at an Awards Ceremony as part of ALTA’s annual conference, ALTA47: Voices in Translation, in Milwaukee, WI. The winning translators will receive a $4,000 cash prize each.
“ALTA is honored to announce the longlists for the 2024 National Translation Awards in Poetry and Prose,” said Rachael Daum, ALTA’s Communications and Awards Manager. “With works spanning continents and centuries, this year’s longlists continue the National Translation Award’s commitment to celebrating diverse, exciting works in translation. ALTA is also extremely grateful to the prize juries, who considered some of the largest batches of submissions in the history of the National Translation Awards; without their time, expertise, and tireless effort, these prizes would not be possible.”
The 2024 NTA longlists feature authors writing in 17 different languages and books from 21 different presses, celebrating the diversity of literature in translation in English and the large, vibrant community of translators, publishers and readers. The award selection criteria include a vis-a-vis evaluation of the quality of the original language book and the quality of the English language translation. This year’s prose judges are Philip Boehm, Shelley Fairweather-Vega, Will Forrester, Joon-Li Kim, and poupeh missaghi. This year’s judges for poetry are Kazim Ali, Ronnie Apter, and Mary Jo Bang.
This year’s Awards Ceremony will take place fully in-person on Saturday, October 26th as part of ALTA’s annual conference, ALTA47: Voices in Translation. The Awards Ceremony will feature this year’s prize judges announcing the winners, and short readings from the winning translators. The conference will be held October 25th-28th in Milwaukee, WI.
About the National Translation Awards (NTA): The NTAs are awarded annually in poetry and in 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. Established in 1998, the NTA, which is administered by American Literary Translators Association (ALTA), is the only national award for translated fiction, poetry, and literary nonfiction that includes a rigorous examination of both the source text and its relation to the finished English work.
The 2024 National Translation Award in Prose Longlist (in alphabetical order by title):
The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers’ Guild
By Mathias Énard
Translated from French by Frank Wynne
New Directions (US), Fitzcarraldo Editions (UK)
By the Rivers of Babylon
By António Lobo Antunes
Translated from Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa
Yale University Press
Cold Nights of Childhood
By Tezer Özlü
Translated from Turkish by Maureen Freely
Transit Books
The End of August
By Yu Miri
Translated from Japanese by Morgan Giles
Riverhead Books (US), Tilted Axis Press (UK)
The Hunger of Women
By Marosia Castaldi
Translated from Italian by Jamie Richards
And Other Stories
Kairos
by Jenny Erpenbeck
translated from German by Michael Hofmann
New Directions (US), Granta Books (UK)
The Liar
By Martin A. Hansen
Translated from Danish by Paul Larkin
New York Review Books
Not Even the Dead
By Juan Gómez Bárcena
Translated from Spanish by Katie Whittemore
Open Letter Books
This is Not Miami
By Fernanda Melchor
Translated from Spanish by Sophie Hughes
New Directions (US), Fitzcarraldo Editions (UK)
Traces of Enayat
By Iman Mersal
Translated from Arabic by Robin Moger
And Other Stories (UK), Transit Books (US)
Whale
By Cheon Myeong-kwan
Translated from Korean by Chi-Young Kim
Archipelago Books (US), Europa Editions UK
The World at My Back
By Thomas Melle
Translated from German by Luise von Flotow
Biblioasis
Read the judges’ citations for each of the titles here.
The 2024 National Translation Award in Poetry Longlist (in alphabetical order by title):
And the Street
By Pierre Alferi
Translated from French by Cole Swensen
Green Linden Press
Bathhouse and Other Tanka
By Tatsuhiko Ishii
Translated from Japanese by Hiroaki Sato
New Directions
Central American Book of the Dead
By Balam Rodrigo
Translated from Spanish by Dan Bellm
FlowerSong Press
Delicates
By Wendy Guerra
Translated from Spanish by Nancy Naomi Carlson and Esperanza Hope Snyder
Seagull Books
The Dragonfly
By Amelia Rosselli
Translated from Italian by Roberta Antognini and Deborah Woodard
Entre Ríos Books
A Friend’s Kitchen
By Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi
Translated from Arabic by Bryar Bajalan with the poet Shook
The Poetry Translation Centre
The Iliad
By Homer
Translated from Ancient Greek by Emily Wilson
W. W. Norton & Company
Landless Boys
By Jerzy Jarniewicz
Translated from Polish by Piotr Florczyk
MadHat Press
Ovid’s Metamorphoses
By Ovid
Translated from Latin by C. Luke Soucy
University of California Press
The Roof of the Whale Poems
By Juan Calzadilla
Translated from Spanish by Katherine M. Hedeen and Olivia Lott
University of Wisconsin Press
Shining Sheep
By Ulrike Almut Sandig
Translated from German by Karen Leeder
Seagull Books
Winter King
By Ostap Slyvynsky
Translated from Ukrainian by Vitaly Chernetsky and Iryna Shuvalova
Lost Horse Press
Read the judges’ citations for each of the titles here.