The NTA Countdown to ALTA44: Stories for the Years

The NTA Countdown to ALTA44: Stories for the Years

Join us as we count down to the ALTA44: Inflection Points awards ceremony with the National Translation Award in Poetry and Prose longlisted titles! We will be featuring the titles in alphabetical order alongside blurbs penned by our judges for the National Translation Awards in Poetry and Prose. This year’s prose judges are Jennifer Croft, Anton Hur, and Annie Janusch. This year’s judges for poetry are Sinan Antoon, Layla Benitez-James, and Sibelan Forrester.

The winning translators will receive a $2,500 cash prize each. The awards will be announced at ALTA’s annual conference, ALTA44: Inflection Points, which this year is being held jointly online and in-person in Tucson, AZ. The virtual awards ceremony will be aired on Saturday, October 16, at 5:00pm PT. To attend, register via the virtual conference platform (there is also a free ticket option that includes public events like this one.)

Join us as we shine the spotlight today on this NTA longlisted title, along with a citation penned by the judges:

Stories for the Years
By Luigi Pirandello
Translated from Italian by Virginia Jewiss
(Yale University Press)

Virginia Jewiss has put together an enthralling introduction to Pirandello that should serve English-speaking readers for generations to come. Thoughtfully translated and arranged, these stories are brimming with vivid adventure, violence and suffering, absurdity, and joy. They bring together a recovered community of characters brought to life from 1901 to 1934, mostly set in Sicily, whose stories will resound in the minds of many curious readers today. Jewiss’s choices throughout are razor-sharp.