Northern California Book Awards

The nominees for the 30th annual Northern California Book Awards were announced yesterday, in advance of the award ceremony taking place on April 10th at Koret Auditorium in the San Francisco Main Library.

Nine awards are given out as part of this celebration, including ones for Best Fiction Translation and Best Poetry Translation. That in itself is cool and worth noting, but in addition, it’s extra cool that this year’s nominees includes an Open Letter title . . .

The site is a bit ca. 1999, but you can click here to see all the nominees. For now, here’s the list of translation finalists:

Fiction

• Translation from Italian by Anne Milano Appel of Blindly by Claudio Magris (Penguin Group (Canada))

• Translation from Polish by David Frick of A Thousand Peaceful Cities by Jerzy Pilch (Open Letter Books)

• Translation from German by Damion Searls of Comedy in a Minor Key by Hans Keilson (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Poetry

• Translation from Germany by Kurt Beals of engulf-enkindle by Anja Utler (Burning Deck)

• Translation from Spanish by Joshua Edwards of Ficticia by María Baranda (Shearsman Books)

• Translation from Greek by John Sakkis and Angelos Sakkis of Maribor by Demosthenes Agrafiotis (The Post-Apollo Press)

Congrats to all! (And David Frick should win.)