PEN Translation Prize ($3,000): For a book-length translation of prose into English published in 2015.

JUDGES: Elisabeth Jaquette, Aviya Kushner, Ronald Meyer, Sara Nović, and Jeffrey Zuckerman

SHORTLIST:

by Clarice Lispector
Translated from the Portuguese by Katrina Dodson (New Directions)

by Vladimir Sorokin
Translated from the Russian by Jamey Gambrell (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Translated from the Russian by Oliver Ready (Penguin Classics)

by Georgi Gospodinov
Translated from the Bulgarian by Angela Rodel (Open Letter Books)

by Viola Di Grado
Translated from the Italian by Antony Shugaar (Europa Editions)

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PEN Award for Poetry in Translation ($3,000): For a book-length translation of poetry into English published in 2015.

JUDGE: Urayoán Noel

SHORTLIST:

by Luis Hernández
Translated from the Spanish by Anthony Geist (Swan Isle Press)

Translated from the Chinese by David Hinton (New Directions)

by Angélica Freitas
Translated from the Portuguese by Hilary Kaplan (Phoneme Media)

Translated from the Russian by Philip Metres and Dimitri Psurtsev (Cleveland State University Poetry Center)

Translated from the Japanese by Sawako Nakayasu (Canarium Books)

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Obviously, I’m most excited that is on this list, but every author, translator, and publisher on here deserves to be congratulated. As do the judges. Pairing down the ten title longlists is a daunting task, and I’m sure picking a single winner is going to be exponentially more difficult.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll get individual posts up about all of these books, but in the meantime, I hope you share this information and pick up one of them to read . . .

First off, here’s the which is the one featuring an Open Letter title:

Spit Temple by Cecilia Vicuña (Ugly Duckling Presse), Rosa Alcalá

Diadem by Marosa di Giorgio (BOA Editions), Adam Giannelli

Tales of a Severed Head by Rachida Madani (Yale University Press), Marilyn Hacker

The Smoke of Distant Fires by Eduardo Chirinos (Open Letter Books), G. J. Racz

Almost 1 Book/Almost 1 Life by Elfriede Czurda (Burning Deck), Rosmarie Waldrop

The Shock of the Lenders and Other Poems by Jorge Santiago Perednik (Action Books), Molly Weigel

Don Mee Choi is the judge for this award, and to digress for a second, I want to recommend her translation of Kim Hyesoon’s book of poetry, All the Garbage of the World, Unite! As I mentioned on here before (and in our podcast), I recently judged a South Korean literature contest and this was one of the absolute best books that was included. She’s a fantastic translator and All the Garbage of the World, Unite! is a really interesting, strange collection. (And has a fun title.)

Moving onto the here are the finalists:

A Long Day’s Evening by Bilge Karasu (City Lights Books), Aron Aji and Fred Stark

Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector (New Directions), Alison Entrekin

Down the Rabbit Hole by Juan Pablo Villalobos (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), Rosalind Harvey

The Cardboard House by Martín Adán (New Directions), Katherine Silver

The Island of Second Sight by Albert Vigoleis Thelen (Galileo Publishers), Donald O. White

Really solid list, although Maidenhair deserves to be on there . . . and no Satantango? Anyway . . . Judging this award are Margaret Carson, Bill Johnston, and Alex Zucker.

Congrats to all the authors, translators, and publishers. The winners will be announced in August, and we’ll post about them here when they are . . .