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Awards and Honors
Congratulations to the 2012 PEN Translation Fund Grant recipients: translator and WWB contributor Musharraf Ali Farooqi, Bernard Adams, Brent Edwards, Alexander Booth, Bonnie Huie, Hillary Gulley, Joshua Daniel Edwin, Deborah Garfinkle, Jacquelyn Pope, Carrie Reed, Nathanaël, Matt Reeck, and Aftab Ahmad!
Julia Powers and Adam Morris have been named the 2012 recipients of the $5,000 Susan Sontag Prize for Translation which, this year, was awarded to a proposed work of literary translation from Portuguese into English. Over the next five months, they will each translate a novel by prolific Brazilian writer Hilda Hilst; Powers will translate Contos d'escárnio/Textos grotescos while Morris will translate Com os meus olhos de cão. Congratulations!
Interviews, Articles, Reviews
“I do a lot of thinking as I drive up the motorway . . . It’s often raining and the windscreen wipers are going like the clappers and planning out the next bit of writing I am going to do stops me from falling asleep!” UK author Jenn Ashworth tells Turkish writer Nermin Yildirim in the first installment of their online correspondence, Manchester Letters. Ashworth and Yildirim's intimate letters cover everything from their daily lives to where inspiration comes from, and how their different social and political landscapes impact creativity. The online exchange will culminate in live events at the Istanbul Tanpinar Literature Festival and the Manchester Literature Festival this October.
On this week's BOMBlog, translator and WWB contributor Alison Entrekin discusses Spinoza, dilated eyes, and choosing simplicity over elegance to capture Clarice Lispector's idiosyncractic, open-ended style. Entrekin's retranslation of Lispector's breakthrough novel, Near to the Wild Heart, was praised by Three Percent for bringing “the intensity and brilliance of Lispector’s prose thrills to life.”
Writer and WWB contributor Sayed Kashua's latest novel, Second Person Singular, weaves together two storylines—one told in first person, and the other in third person. It was reviewed by Three Percent and the LA Times.
Translation News
Good news for Spanish-language writers! Conaculta (Mexican National Endowment for the Advancement of the Arts and Culture) has just announced its new Carlos Fuentes International Prize for Literary Creation, an award to be given annually in recognition of a living writer who has “contributed to deciphering realities that otherwise would not have been imagined, cultivating new concepts of the human condition” through “work whose ingenuity and creativity has crossed social, cultural, linguistic, ethnic, racial, political and economic boundaries . . . elevating the local to a global reading experience.” In addition to the equivalent of a US$250,000 prize, the winner will receive a sculpture designed by Mexican artist Vicente Rojo, a certificate, and the publication of his or her acceptance speech.
PictureBox Inc. recently announced that they'll be publishing the first full-length book of influential French cartoonist, and WWB contributor, Blutch's work for an English-speaking audience. Look for Blutch's graphic novel So Long, Silver Screen in Spring 2013.
SUBMIT
Spanish Translation Workshop with Margaret Jull Costa (8/12)
what: Legendary translator, and frequent WWB contributor, Margaret Jull Costa will be leading a two-hour intensive Spanish translation workshop.
when: Sunday, August 12, 3-5pm.
where: San Francisco's Center for the Art of Translation.
application deadline: Applicants should submit a two-page fiction sample. The workshop is first-come, first served, and will be capped at 12 people.
website: http://www.catranslation.org/blogpost/translation-workshop-margaret-jull-costa
Yaddo Residency (8/1)
what: Residency (translators, poets, fiction writers, and nonfiction writers are eligible).
when: Residencies range from two weeks to two months, between late October and May.
where: A 400-acre estate in Saratoga Springs, New York.
application deadline: August 1
website: yaddo.org