Join us as we count down to the ALTA44: Inflection Points awards ceremony with the National Translation Award in Poetry and Prose longlisted titles! We will be featuring the titles in alphabetical order alongside blurbs penned by our judges for the National Translation Awards in Poetry and Prose. This year’s prose judges are Jennifer Croft, Anton Hur, and Annie Janusch. This year’s judges for poetry are Sinan Antoon, Layla Benitez-James, and Sibelan Forrester.

The winning translators will receive a $2,500 cash prize each. The awards will be announced at ALTA’s annual conference, ALTA44: Inflection Points, which this year is being held jointly online and in-person in Tucson, AZ. The virtual awards ceremony will be aired on Saturday, October 16, at 5:00pm PT. To attend, register via the virtual conference platform (there is also a free ticket option that includes public events like this one.)

Join us as we shine the spotlight today on this NTA longlisted title, along with a citation penned by the judges:

Agadir
By Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine
Translated from French by Pierre Joris and Jake Syersak
(Diálogos)

While working for the Department of Social Security, the young Moroccan writer Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine was sent to the city of Agadir to collect material on the victims of the devastating earthquake of 1960. This actual event serves as a pretext and narrative frame for writing this haunting and rebellious work. Khaïr-Eddine, one of the major Francophone literary figures of North Africa, performs his own verbal and stylistic earthquake in these pages. Surveying the ruins of time and history, his hallucinatory voice disrupts generic boundaries and dodges facile classification.