French Voices — Year Four

Information about the fourth year of French Voices was announced yesterday.

As stated on the above website, the goal of French Voices is to ensure that contemporary French works (both fiction and non) are published in English translation. To that end, each year, between seven and twelve titles are selected to be part of the program. The translators receive $6,000 and the books are “branded” as part of the “French Voices series.” (For example, Waberi’s In the United States of Africa, which I reviewed a couple weeks ago, is part of this series and sports the French Voices logo on the cover.)

A committee of French and American professionals choose the books for the series, and recommendations can be made by literary agents, publishers, editors, and translators . . . All you have to do is fill out this application and send in some basic documents (sample translation, translator CV, etc.) by March 31st.

Always curious to see what gets selected (Echenoz’s Ravel, Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehot, and Laurrent’s Do Not Touch are some recent winners), and I have my fingers crossed for Mathias Enard’s Zone . . .