October 26, 2024—The American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) is pleased to announce the winner of the 2024 Spain-USA Foundation Translation Award (SUFTA). This prize, which was inaugurated in 2022, is offered by the American Literary Translators Association in conjunction with the Spain-USA Foundation. The award recognizes translations into English of literary prose works written originally by authors of Spanish (Spain) nationality. The 2024 judges are Jonathan Beutler, Regina Galasso, and Kathleen McNerney.
This year’s winner was announced at the Awards Ceremony held during ALTA’s 47th annual conference, ALTA47: Voices in Translation, held in Milwaukee, WI from October 25-28, 2024. The ceremony, held on Saturday, October 26, included a spotlight on the 2024 shortlist. Presenting judge Kathleen McNerney conferred the prize on Julia Sanches, who accepted the prize on the winner’s behalf as he could not be present at the ceremony. She read a short statement from the winner, and a reading selected from the winning title. The winner will be awarded a $5,000 prize and a commemorative plaque.
Winner: 2024 Spain-USA Foundation Translation Award (SUFTA)
Open Heart
By Elvira Lindo
Translated from Spanish by Adrian Nathan West
Other Press
This is what the judges had to say about the winner:
Open Heart is the first of Lindo’s books for adults to reach English readers. It’s a novel about survival, whether it be in post-Civil War Spain or as a girl who experiences a nomadic childhood and during adolescence loses her mother. Once open, this novel is difficult to close, and after its final page, the story, inspired by Lindo’s own parents, remains on the heart. Readers will admire the intense relationship West must have had with Lindo’s language, as it shifts throughout the telling of different life periods and roles. West maintains the momentum of the convincing openness of what Lindo’s words share about ways of being part of a family and being yourself.
About the winner
Adrian Nathan West is an essayist, author of the novel My Father’s Diet, and translator of several dozen books from Spanish, German, and Portuguese, including Hermann Burger’s Brenner and The Weight of Things by Marianne Fritz.
Image description: Nate, a man with a shaved head, is standing in front of a commercial building on a street on a sunny day in Chinatown, Philadelphia in a grey T-shirt.
The 2025 Spain-USA Foundation Translation Award (SUFTA) submissions portal will be opened in January 2025.