We’re happy to announce the 2020 Best Translated Book Award! All the relevant information is below. Please let me know if you have any questions.<\/p>\n
Award Dates<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
In terms of dates, this is subject to change, but currently we\u2019re planning on announcing the longlists for fiction and poetry on Wednesday, April 1st<\/sup>, the finalists on May 27th<\/sup>, and the winners on May 27th<\/sup>.<\/p>\n
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Description<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
In its thirteenth year, Best Translated Book Award\u00a0was founded in 2007 to draw attention to the best works of translated literature of the following year. The award\u2019s emphasis is on the quality of the book\u00a0and<\/em>\u00a0translation, with the argument that you can\u2019t have a great work of literature without both of these aspects working at a very high level. The juries are made up of booksellers, writers, translators, and readers.<\/p>\n
Starting with the 2009 award (all years given are for the year in which the winners are announced; the books are from the year previous), works of fiction and poetry were awarded separately. And beginning with the 2011 award, each winning author and translator received a $5,000 cash prize thanks to the Amazon Literary Partnership program. Thanks to this program, we have given out over $125,000 in prizes to international authors and their translators. (The amount of prize money is subject to change, but 100% of the money raised for the award is given directly to the translators, authors, and jurors.)<\/p>\n
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Eligibility<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Any work of translation published in English for the first time ever between January 1, 2019 and December 31, 2019 is eligible for the award. A book that existed in English in a previous translation is not eligible, unless more than half of its content is new. (For example, a new collection of poems of which one-third appeared in an early translation\u00a0would<\/em>\u00a0be eligible, but a novel with an extra ten pages added that were previously censored would not.) Books published in the UK are eligible\u00a0if<\/em>\u00a0they are distributed in the U.S. through normal means. Self-published ebooks in translation are eligible\u00a0if<\/em>\u00a0they have an\u00a0ISBN\u00a0and are available for purchase through more than one outlet.<\/p>\n
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Submission Process<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
To ensure that their books are given full consideration, publishers should send a copy to each of the judges in the appropriate category. Please write \u201cBTBA\u00a02020\u201d on the front of the package. There are nine fiction judges and five poetry, but Open Letter\u2019s offices are included as well for record-keeping purposes. There is no submission fee. Although e-versions are acceptable, they are not encouraged. Every book that\u2019s submitted will be reviewed in full by at least one judge. All of the 2020 judges are based in the U.S. to save publishers on shipping costs. Send the books now to give the juries the most reading time, but make sure you get them all in by December 31, 2019. Thanks!<\/p>\n
Here are mailing labels for the fiction<\/a> and poetry<\/a>\u00a0juries.<\/p>\n
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Poetry Judges<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This year\u2019s poetry committee:<\/p>\n
Nancy Naomi Carlson <\/strong>is a poet and translator. Recipient of an NEA literature translation grant and a\u00a0finalist for the BTBA and the CLMP Firecracker Poetry Award, she\u2019s been decorated with the French Academic Palms. Her work has appeared in APR, The Georgia Review, The Paris Review, and Poetry.<\/p>\n
Patricia Lockwood<\/strong> was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and raised in all the worst cities of the Midwest. She is the author of two poetry collections,\u00a0Balloon Pop Outlaw Black<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals<\/em>, a\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0Notable Book. Her writing has appeared in the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>,\u00a0The New Yorker<\/em>,\u00a0The New Republic<\/em>,\u00a0Slate<\/em>, and\u00a0The London Review of Books<\/em>. She lives in Lawrence, Kansas.<\/p>\n
Aditi Machado<\/strong> is a poet, translator, and former poetry editor of\u00a0Asymptote<\/em>. She is the author of\u00a0Some Beheadings<\/em>\u00a0and translator of Farid Tali\u2019s\u00a0Prosopopoeia<\/em>.<\/p>\n
Laura Marris<\/strong> is a writer and translator from French. Recent projects include Paol Keineg’s\u00a0Triste Tristan\u00a0<\/em>(co-translated with Rosmarie Waldrop for Burning Deck Press) and\u00a0In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower<\/em>\u00a0(Liveright), a comic-book version of Proust\u2019s classic.\u00a0<\/em>Her translation of Louis Guilloux\u2019s\u00a0Blood Dark\u00a0<\/em>(NYRB) was shortlisted for the 2018 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. She teaches writing at the University at Buffalo.<\/p>\n
Brandon Shimoda<\/strong> is the author of several books, most recently\u00a0The Grave on the Wall\u00a0<\/em>(City Lights),\u00a0The Desert\u00a0<\/em>(The Song Cave), and\u00a0Evening Oracle\u00a0<\/em>(Letter Machine Editions), which received the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America.\u00a0He is currently writing (more often disintegrating) a book on the afterlife\/ruins of Japanese American incarceration.<\/p>\n
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Fiction Judges<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This year\u2019s fiction committee:<\/p>\n