Best Translated Book Award 2017: The Judges

Running a little bit late with the BTBA announcments for this year, but over the next week, expect to see the official page updated and an updated to the translation database. In the meantime, this post will give publishers, translators, and interested readers all the necessary information about who’s on the committee this year, and how to submit titles.

In terms of dates, this is subject to change, but currently we’re planning on announcing the longlists for fiction and poetry on Tuesday, March 28th, the finalists on Tuesday, April 18th, and the winners on Tuesday, May 9th.

Description

The Best Translated Book Award was founded in 2007 (making this its tenth iteration) to draw attention to the best works of translated literature that came out the following year. The award’s emphasis is on the quality of the book and translation, with the argument that you can’t have a great work of literature without both of these aspects working at a very high level.

Starting with the 2009 award (all years given are for the year in which the winners are announced; the books are from the year previous), works of fiction and poetry were awarded separately. And beginning with the 2011 award, each winning author and translator received a $5,000 cash prize thanks to the Amazon Literary Partnership program. Thanks to this program, we have given out $100,000 in prizes to international authors and their translators.

Eligibility

Any work of translation published in English for the first time ever between January 1, 2016 and December 31, 2016 is eligible for the award. A book that existed in English in a previous translation is not eligible, unless more than half of its content is new. (For example, a new collection of poems of which one-third appeared in an early translation would be eligible, but a novel with an extra ten pages added that were previously censored would not.) Books published in the UK are eligible if they are distributed in the U.S. through normal means. Self-published ebooks in translation are eligible if they have an ISBN are available for purchase through more than one outlet.

Submission Process

To ensure that their books are given full consideration, publishers should send a copy to each of the judges in the appropriate category. Please write “BTBA 2017” on the front of the package. There are nine fiction judges and five poetry, but Open Letter’s offices are included as well for record-keeping purposes. There is no submission fee. Although e-versions are acceptable, they are not encouraged. Every book that’s submitted will be reviewed in full by at least one judge. Unlike past years, all of the 2017 judges are based in the U.S. to save publishers on shipping costs.

Click here for mailing labels for the fiction judges (and here for one with email addresses included).

Click here for mailing labels for the poetry judges (and here for one with email addresses included).

Poetry Judges

This year’s poetry committee:

Jarrod Annis is a writer and bookseller living in Brooklyn, NY. He works as manager and small press buyer at Greenlight Bookstore, and previously served as an associate editor at Ugly Duckling Presse. His work has appeared in Coldfront, Greetings, and Poems By Sunday.

Katrine Øgaard Jensen is an editor at the Council for European Studies at Columbia University and a translator from the Danish. She previously served as blog editor at Asymptote and Words Without Borders, and as editor in chief of the Columbia Journal.

Tess Lewis is a writer and translator from French and German and serves as an Advisory Editor for the Hudson Review. Her translations have won a number of awards including the 2015 ACFNY Translation Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Becka Mara McKay directs the Creative Writing MFA at Florida Atlantic University. Publications include poetry: A Meteorologist in the Promised Land (Shearsman, 2010) and Happiness Is the New Bedtime (Slash Pine Press, 2016) and three translations of Israeli fiction: Laundry (Autumn Hill, 2008), Blue Has No South (Clockroot, 2010), and Lunar Savings Time (Clockroot, 2011).

Emma Ramadan is a translator of fiction and poetry from the French, including Anne Garréta’s Sphinx (Deep Vellum) and Anne Parian’s Monospace (La Presse). She lives in Providence, RI where she is the co-owner of Riffraff, a bookstore and bar. She also recently received an NEA Translation Fellowship.

Fiction Judges

This year’s fiction committee:

Trevor Berrett is the creator and editor of The Mookse and the Gripes, where he and others review world literature and film. He can be found on Twitter @mookse.

Monica Carter is a freelance critic whose nonfiction has appeared in publications including Black Clock, World Literature Today, and Foreword Reviews. She curates Salonica World Lit, which is a virtual journal dedicated to international literature and culture.

Rachel S. Cordasco has a Ph.D. in Literary Studies from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and has taught courses in American and British literature, and Composition. She recently launched a site devoted to speculative fiction in translation.

Jennifer Croft is the recipient of Fulbright, PEN and National Endowment for the Arts grants, as well as the Michael Henry Heim Prize for Translation. She has been a MacDowell Colony Fellow and holds a Ph.D. from Northwestern University and an MFA from the University of Iowa. She is a Founding Editor of the Buenos Aires Review.

Lori Feathers is an Assistant Managing Editor at Asymptote, a freelance book critic and member of the National Book Critics Circle. Her recent reviews can be found at The Rumpus, Words Without Borders, World Literature Today, Full Stop, Three Percent, Rain Taxi and on Twitter @LoriFeathers.

Jeremy Garber is the events coordinator for Powell’s Books and also a freelance reviewer.

Mark Haber is the manager of Brazos Bookstore in Houston, Texas. He is also a freelance book critic whose recent reviews can be found at Music & Literature and The Rumpus. His book of short stories, Deathbed Conversions, is currently getting translated into Spanish by Argonáutica books in Mexico.

George Henson is a translator of contemporary Latin American and Spanish prose, a contributing editor for World Literature Today and Asymptote, and a lecturer at the University of Oklahoma.

Steph Opitz is the books reviewer for Marie Claire magazine. She also works with the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP), Kirkus Reviews, the Brooklyn Book Festival, and the Twin Cities Book Festival.

There you go! Starting next week, the blog will pick up again with more reviews, previews of forthcoming books, BTBA posts, and general articles—including one about where I’ve been all summer—to go along with the podcasts and information about Open Letter author tours. Summer’s over, apparently.