Katherine Silver wins NCBA Translation Award

The 28th Northern California Book Awards were held in San Francisco last weekend, and, in conjunction with the Center for the Art of Translation, they awarded a Translation Award “to bring attention to all the wonderful translations coming out of the Bay Area and to encourage local audiences to read more international literature.”

This year’s winner was Katherine Silver, for her translation of Horacio Castellanos Moya’s Senselessness.

Here’s a list of the nominees:

• The Old Man’s Verses by Ivan Divis, Translated from Czech by Deborah Garfinkle, Host Publications

• Odes and Elegies by Friedrich Hölderlin, Translated from German by Nick Hoff, Wesleyan University Press

• State of Exile by Cristina Peri Rossi, Translated from Spanish by Marilyn Buck, City Lights Publishers

• Senselessness by Horacio Castellanos Moya, Translated from Spanish by Katherine Silver, New Directions

• Belonging: New Poetry by Iranians Around the World, Translated from Persian by Niloufar Talebi, North Atlantic Books

It’s a worthy list, and we’re not about to argue with the result. Senselessness is an incredible novel, and the translation is wonderful as well.

If you’d like a chance to meet Moya, and maybe get him to sign a copy of Senselessness for you, you can catch him at the PEN World Voices Festival next week. One of his events is with our own Jan Kjaerstad, which we couldn’t be more pleased about.