October 9, 2025—The American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) announced today the shortlists for the 2025 National Translation Awards (NTA) in Poetry and Prose.

2025 marks the 27th year for the NTA, and the 11th year to award separate prizes in poetry and prose. The winners will be announced on November 6 at an Awards Ceremony as part of ALTA’s annual conference, ALTA48: Visions and Versions in Tucson, AZ. The winning translators will receive a $4,000 cash prize each.

The 2025 NTA shortlists feature authors writing in 8 different languages and books from 13 different presses, celebrating the diversity of literature in translation in English and the large, vibrant community of translators, publishers and readers. This year’s prose judges are George Henson, Hoyoung Moon, Ilze Duarte, Manjushree Thapa, and Peter Constantine. This year’s judges for poetry are Conor Bracken, Dongshin Chang, and Rachel Galvin.

For more information about the National Translation Awards in Poetry and Prose, and to see what the judges had to say about each of this year’s shortlisted titles, visit this page.

The National Translation Award in Prose shortlist (in alphabetical order by title):

The Book Censor’s Library by Bothayna Al-Essa, translated from Arabic by Ranya Abdelrahman and Sawad Hussain (Restless Books)

Dear Dickhead by Virginie Despentes, translated from French by Frank Wynne (Farrar, Straus and Giroux [US] | MacLehose Press [UK])

A Last Supper of Queer Apostles by Pedro Lemebel, translated from Spanish by Gwendolyn Harper (Penguin Books)

Melvill by Rodrigo Fresán, translated from Spanish by Will Vanderhyden (Open Letter Books)

Sand-Catcher by Omar Khalifah, translated from Arabic by Barbara Romaine (Coffee House Press)

Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ, translated from Mandarin Chinese by Lin King (Graywolf Press)

 

The National Translation Award in Poetry shortlist (in alphabetical order by title):

The Brush by Eliana Hernández-Pachón, translated from Colombian Spanish by Robin Myers (Archipelago Books)

Chimera by Phoebe Giannisi, translated from Greek by Brian Sneeden (New Directions)

Document Shredding Museum by Afrizal Malna, translated from Indonesian by Daniel Owen (World Poetry Books)

How to Love in Sanskrit by various authors, translated from Sanskrit by Anusha Rao and Suhas Mahesh (HarperCollins India)

Just Like by Lee Sumyeong, translated from Korean by Colin Leemarshall (Black Ocean)

Transit by Claudina Domingo, translated from Mexican Spanish by Ryan Greene (Eulalia Books)

To see what the judges had to say about each of this year’s shortlisted titles, visit this page.

About the National Translation Awards (NTA)

The NTAs are awarded annually in poetry and in prose to literary translators who have made an outstanding contribution to literature in English by masterfully recreating the artistic force of a book of consummate quality. Established in 1998, the NTA, which is administered by American Literary Translators Association (ALTA), is the only national award for translated fiction, poetry, and literary nonfiction that includes a rigorous examination of both the source text and its relation to the finished English work.