The Cliff Becker Prize is given to an unpublished book-length manuscript of poetry in translation. The translator of the winning manuscript will receive a standard publication contract with White Pine Press. In lieu of an advance against royalties, the translator will receive a prize of $1,000. The winning manuscript will be published within a calendar year of selection. This year’s submissions for the Cliff Becker Book Prize in Translation are open until April 16, 2018.
This year we’re thrilled to have Daniel Borzutzky, Aaron Coleman, and Mani Rao on board as judges for the Cliff Becker Prize! Find out more about our judges below:
Daniel Borzutzky is a poet and translator, and the author of Lake Michigan (2018) and The Performance of Becoming Human, winner of the 2016 National Book Award for Poetry. His other books include In the Murmurs of the Rotten Carcass Economy, Memories of My Overdevelopment, and The Book of Interfering Bodies. His translation of Galo Ghigliotto’s Valdivia won ALTA’s 2017 National Translation Award for Poetry. Other translations include Raúl Zurita’s The Country of Planks and Song for His Disappeared Love; and Jaime Luis Huenun’s Port Trakl. He lives in Chicago.
Aaron Coleman is the author of Threat Come Close (Four Way Books, 2018) and the chapbook St. Trigger, selected by Adrian Matejka for the 2015 Button Poetry Prize. A Fulbright Scholar and Cave Canem Fellow, Aaron’s poems have appeared in Boston Review, FENCE, New York Times Magazine, and elsewhere. Winner of the ALTA Peter K. Jansen Memorial Fellowship, the Tupelo Quarterly Poetry Contest, and the Cincinnati Review Schiff Award, Aaron is currently a PhD student in Comparative Literature at Washington University St. Louis.
Mani Rao has eight poetry books including New & Selected Poems (Poetrywala, 2014), Ghostmasters (Chameleon, 2010), and Echolocation (Math Paper Press, 2014) and two books in translation from Sanskrit— The Bhagavad Gita (Autumn Hill Books, 2010) and Kalidasa for the 21st Century Reader (Aleph, 2015). She was a Visiting Fellow at the Iowa IWP in 2005 and 2009, and the 2006 Uni of Iowa International Programs writer-in-residence. Mani has an MFA in Creative Writing and a PhD in Religious Studies. See manirao.com for a full list of publications and links.