October 31, 2016—The American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) is delighted to announce the winner of the 2016 Italian Prose in Translation Award! The award was officially announced during ALTA’s annual conference, ALTA39: Translation & Crossings, held this year at the Marriott Oakland City Center in Oakland, CA, from October 6-9, 2016.

Starting in 2015, the Italian Prose in Translation Award (IPTA) recognizes the importance of contemporary Italian prose (fiction and literary non-fiction) and promotes the translation of Italian works into English. This $5,000 cash prize is awarded annually to a translator of a recent work of Italian prose (fiction or literary non-fiction). This year’s judges are Michael Moore, Jamie Richards, and Russell Valentino. Read what the judges had to say about the winning title below.

Winner: 2016 Italian Prose in Translation Award

The Story of the Lost Child
By Elena Ferrante
Translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein
(Europa Editions)

In The Story of the Lost Child, the pseudonymous Elena Ferrante brings full circle her visceral and compelling four-part saga, The Brilliant Friend. Through this cycle of novels, the author traces in acid the close yet conflicted bond between two women, Lila and Elena, from their childhood in the poor quarters of Naples to young adulthood, separation, and the disappearance of Lila decades later. Each character struggles to escape the searing oppression of the city’s lower depths, but each will eventually succumb. Translator Ann Goldstein proves more than equal to the challenge of capturing the grit, color and dynamic of Ferrante’s prose, and has contributed immeasurably to the quartet’s breakaway success.

Submissions for the 2017 Italian Prose in Translation Award will be accepted starting in January 2017.
Please visit us at www.literarytranslators.org/awards for more information.