The National Translation Award is awarded annually in poetry and in prose to literary translators who have made an outstanding contribution to literature in English by masterfully recreating the artistic force of a book of consummate quality. The NTA is the only prize for a work of literary translation into English to include an evaluation of the source language text. 2019 marks the twenty-first year of the NTA and the fifth year in which the NTA is awarded separately in poetry and prose. Submissions for the National Translation Award in Poetry are being accepted until April 15, 2019.
We are honored to present this year’s judges, Anna Deeny Morales, Cole Heinowitz, and Sholeh Wolpé. Learn about them below:
Anna Deeny Morales is a translator, literary critic, and dramatist. Her translations of Raúl Zurita’s works include Purgatory, Dreams for Kurosawa, and Sky Below, Selected Works, of which she is also the editor. She has also translated works by Mercedes Roffé, Alejandra Pizarnik, and Amanda Berenguer, among others. Original works and adaptations for contemporary dance, theater, and opera include La straniera, Tela di Ragno, Cecilia Valdés, and La Paloma and the Wall. A 2019 National Endowment for the Arts recipient for the translation of Tala by Gabriela Mistral, Deeny Morales holds a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and teaches at Georgetown University. She co-directs the Gabriela Mistral Youth Poetry Competition.
Cole Heinowitz is a poet, translator, and scholar. Her poems have appeared in Letters to Olson (Spuyten Duyvil, 2016), In/Filtration (Station Hill, 2016), and journals such as Aufgabe, 6X6, Fence, HOW2, and The Poker. Her translations include A Tradition of Rupture: Selected Critical Writings of Alejandra Pizarnik (Ugly Duckling Presse, forthcoming), and three collections by Mario Santiago Papasquiaro: Advice from 1 Disciple of Marx to 1 Heidegger Fanatic (Wave Books, 2013), Beauty is Our Spiritual Guernica (Commune Editions, 2015), and Bleeding from All 5 Senses (White Pine Press, forthcoming), the latter of which was awarded ALTA’s 2019 Cliff Becker Prize. Heinowitz is also the author of the critical study, Spanish America and British Romanticism, 1777-1826: Rewriting Conquest (Edinburgh UP, 2010), and numerous essays on poetry from the Romantic Era to the present.
Credit: Bonnie Perkinson
Sholeh Wolpé is an Iranian-born poet and writer. Wolpé’s modern translation of The Conference of the Birds (W.W. Norton) by the 12th century Iranian mystic poet Attar has been hailed by Reza Aslan as a translation that “is sure to be as timeless as the masterpiece itself.” Wolpé ’s translation of iconic Iranian poet, Forugh Farrokhzad, Sin (University of Arkansas Press), received the prestigious Lois Roth Persian Translation award and is now in its fourth printing. Wolpé’s literary work includes five collections of poetry, four books of translations, several plays, and three anthologies.