June 2020 translation news roundup
Your roundup of news from translation, publishing, and arts education that you may have missed in June!
Prizes
Johannes Anyuru’s They Will Drown in Their Mothers’ Tears has won the 2020 CLMP Firecracker Award(opens in a new tab) for Fiction. The Award was created to “celebrate books and magazines that make a significant contribution to our literary culture and the publishers that strive to introduce important voices to readers far and wide.”
And the Two Lines journal of world writing in translation won the Firecracker Award for Magazines: General Excellence.
The 2020 Lambda Literary Awards(opens in a new tab) for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender fiction, nonfiction, and poetry were announced in early June.
News
Bjørn Rasmussen’s The Skin is the Elastic Covering That Encases the Entire Body, translated by Martin Aitken, was on Words Without Borders’s list of 8 queer books in translation to read this Pride month(opens in a new tab).
As the audiobook market grows, narrators of color find their voice(opens in a new tab).
The annual Book Expo America moved programming online and reached a large digital crowd(opens in a new tab).
The new Translators Aloud YouTube channel(opens in a new tab) is “a friendly space where literary translators can share their work.”
A recent Interabang Publisher Chat(opens in a new tab) featured Executive Director & Publisher Michael Holtmann and Sales & Marketing Manager Chad Felix talking with bookseller Lori Feathers about the Two Lines Press backlist and forthcoming 2020 titles.
Reading List
In the Paris Review(opens in a new tab), Echo on the Bay and Lion Cross Point author Masatsugu Ono examines the influence of Haruki Murakami’s “translationese“ style on Japanese literature and invites us to ponder questions of literary identity.
And in case you missed it, an interview with Masatsugu Ono and bookseller Elijah Watson.
Booker International Prize-winning translator Jennifer Croft shared this list of Black authors in English translation(opens in a new tab).
Beyond Babylon translator Aaron Robertson reflected on Juneteenth celebrations past, with family near and far.(opens in a new tab)
Igiaba Scego considers the racist history and present sung in “Faccetta Nera,”(opens in a new tab) an old Italian Fascist tune.
On translation and English’s dominance of food media(opens in a new tab).
