Marcia Lynx Qualey, the founder of ArabLit and an award-winning editor, writer, and translator, will receive the 2024 Ottaway Award for the Promotion of International Literature, Words Without Borders announced today. The award will be presented by translator and writer Yasmine Seale at a ceremony on June 4 in New York City. A recording of the event will be made available on the Words Without Borders website.
“Marcia Lynx Qualey, and the wide network she has fostered through ArabLit, has had a huge impact on the amount and range of Arabic literature available in English today,” said WWB’s board chair, Samantha Schnee. “We applaud her heroic efforts to bring greater exposure to today’s Arabic writers while cultivating emerging translators and critics.”
The Ottaway Award recognizes Marcia Lynx Qualey’s tireless efforts to promote Arabic-language literature in English and provide mentorship and support to her fellow writers and translators. In 2009, she founded the literary magazine and website ArabLit, which won the London Book Fair’s Literary Translation Initiative award in 2017. In the fifteen years since its founding, ArabLit has enabled hundreds of thousands of annual readers to engage with established and emerging voices in contemporary Arabophone literature. The magazine publishes dozens of debut writers and translators each year, a reflection of Qualey’s commitment to supporting emerging professionals. A translator-centered collective, ArabLit has also served as a vital space of community and mentorship for Arab-speaking writers, editors, and translators based all over the world. Qualey has further advocated for literature in translation as a cohost of the BULAQ podcast, which focuses on writing of the Maghreb and Mashreq, and as a cofounder of the “WorldKidLit” initiative, which promotes global children’s literature.
Qualey is the first Ottaway Award winner to focus on a particular region of the literary world, a fact that speaks to her impact in bringing greater visibility to Arabic literature in English. As a critic for various publications and a regular speaker at literary events, she has succeeded in fostering meaningful dialogue around writing that remains underrepresented in the anglophone marketplace. As a translator, too, Qualey has made important contributions to the field: she has a special love for Arabic literature for young readers and has received accolades for her translations of several YA novels into English. Her rendition of Haya Saleh’s Wild Poppies was shortlisted for the 2024 Global Literature in Libraries Initiative (GLLI) Award, and her translation of the first two novels in Sonia Nimr’s Thunderbird trilogy was shortlisted for the Banipal Prize.
Named in honor of the first chair of Words Without Borders, Jim Ottaway, Jr., the Ottaway Award recognizes an individual whose work and activism have advanced WWB’s mission of promoting cultural understanding through the publication and promotion of international literature. Past awardees include Daniel Hahn, Naveen Kishore, Edith Grossman, Chad W. Post, Jill Schoolman, Barbara Epler, Sara Bershtel, the late Carol Brown Janeway, and Drenka Willen.
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Contact: Anna Claire Weber
Organization Name: Words Without Borders
Email Address: press@wordswithoutborders.org
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