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:

I Live in the Slums
By Can Xue
Translated from Chinese by Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping
(Yale University Press)

Narratively shot in severe close-up, the stories that make up I Live in the Slums play with perspective and distance, letting the reader see only what is immediately visible to each story’s protagonist—be they animal, human, or otherwise. This makes for an unsettlingly myopic tension that puts the reader on constant alert for potential threats within a capricious narrative environment. Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping’s translation is notable for its attention to the animal logic at work in these stories, daring to discomfort the reader by never explaining or determining the narrative more than it wishes to be read.