Join us as we count down to the ALTA43: In Between 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 judges for prose are Amaia Gabantxo, Emmanuel D. Harris II, and William Maynard Hutchins. This year’s judges for poetry are Ilya Kaminsky, Lisa Katz, and Farid Matuk.

The awards ceremony will air on October 15, 2020 on ALTA’s Crowdcast page: you can register to attend the NTA in Prose announcement here, and the NTA in Poetry announcement here. Find the full list of longlisted titles here.

Today we’re shining the spotlight on NTA in Prose longlisted title Ithaca Forever:

Ithaca Forever: Penelope Speaks
by Luigi Malerba
translated from the Italian by Douglas Grant Heise
(University of California Press)

I’ve never trusted sailors, whom I know to be the biggest liars in the world.

What might have been one more clever adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey with special attention to Penelope becomes, through the combined alchemy of the late author and the lively translator, a convincing contemporary novel.