Thank You, National Endowment for the Arts!

The first set of Art Works grants from the NEA were announced this morning, and I’m incredibly giddy about the fact that Open Letter was awarded $45,000 for the following:

To support the publication and promotion of books in translation and the continuation of the translation website Three Percent. Works from Germany, Denmark, Bulgaria, Italy, Iceland, and Greece will be translated. The website features 50-70 book reviews per year; the Best Translated Book Awards; and posts on international awards, new works, opportunities for translators, the future and business of publishing, and book culture in general.

To make that a bit more specific, this grant will primarily support the publication and promotion of these five titles:

Two or Three Years Later by Ror Wolf, translated from the German by Jennifer Marquart;

This Is the Garden by Guilio Mozzi, translated from the Italian by Elizabeth Harris;

The Last Days of My Mother by Sölvi Björn Sigurðsson, translated from the Icelandic by Helga Soffía Einarsdóttir;

When We Leave Each Other by Henrik Nordbrandt, translated from the Danish by Patrick Phillips; and,

Why I Killed My Best Friend by Amanda Michalopoulou, translated from the Greek by Karen Emmerich.

We’ll be posting more information about all these titles as they become available (the Nordbrant poems will be coming out first, in April as part of National Poetry Month), and posting excerpts, etc.

So far, this has been a great week for Open Letter . . . And I recommend checking out the full list of literary organizations receiving NEA funding—it’s an absolutely stellar list of some of the best nonprofit lit orgs in the country.