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:

The Olive Trees’ Jazz and Other Poems
By Samira Negrouche
Translated from French by Marilyn Hacker
(Pleiades Press)

Negrouche’s moving poems inhabit a hybrid landscape where Algeria’s languages, genealogies, and poignant histories converge and converse through the poet’s elusive subjectivity. Marilyn Hacker’s delicate translation from French brings out the “memory of subterranean musics” that Negrouche excavates from poetic ancestors and marginalized histories. These poems’ roots run deep into the “structures of silence” while their leaves defy geography.