October 26, 2024— The American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) announced the winner of the 2024 National Translation Award (NTA) in Prose on October 26th at an Awards Ceremony as part of ALTA’s annual conference, ALTA47: Voices in Translation, in Milwaukee, WI. The conference was held October 25th-28th in Milwaukee, WI. 2024 marks the 26th year for the NTA, and the 10th year to award separate prizes in poetry and prose.
This year’s judges are Philip Boehm, Shelley Fairweather-Vega, Will Forrester, Joon-Li Kim, and poupeh missaghi. Judge poupeh missaghi conferred the prize on Jamie Richards, who read a short statement and selection from the winning text. The winning translator will receive a $4,000 cash prize and a commemorative plaque.
Winner: 2024 National Translation Award in Prose
The Hunger of Women
By Marosia Castaldi
Translated from Italian by Jamie Richards
And Other Stories
This is what the judges had to say about this year’s winner:
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.
About the winner
Jamie Richards is a professional literary translator. Her work focuses on contemporary and twentieth-century Italian fiction and comics, and in addition to several book-length publications, can be found in numerous periodicals online and in print. The recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship, she holds an MFA in literary translation from the University of Iowa, where she was recently translator in residence, as well as a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Oregon. She currently resides in her native Los Angeles after many years in Milan.
Image description: Jamie, a middle-aged white woman with blue eyes and medium-brown shoulder length hair, is shown in front of a window. Jamie has a slight smile and is wearing a black knit top.
“ALTA is honored to recognize Cole Swensen and Jamie Richards as the winners of the 2024 National Translation Awards in Poetry and Prose, respectively,” said ALTA President Chenxin Jiang. “We are proud to administer the National Translation Awards, which turn the spotlight on a number of accomplished translators, writers, and the publishers who make it possible for these marvellous books to appear in English. We also hope they offer a starting point for readers hoping to pick up a new book or three in translation.”
About the National Translation Awards: The National Translation Award is 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. 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 2025 National Translation Award submissions portal will be opened in January 2025.