Weekly Dispatches from the Frontlines of World Literature

March 30, 2018 | in Dispatches, News, Weekly Roundup | by José García Escobar, Julia Sherwood, Kelsey Woodburn, and Paul Worley

Our weekly roundup of literary news brings us to Guatemala, Mexico, and Poland.

Wondering what is going on around the literary globe? You are in luck! This week we have reports from our amazing Editors at Large from Guatemala, Mexico, and Poland. Keep on reading!

José García Escobar, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Guatemala:

We’ve got new winners and new publications coming from Guatemala!

F&G Editores just announced the latest winner of their biannual short-story collection award, BAM Letras, Marlon Meza with his book Coreografía del desencanto. Additionally, the jury suggested the publication of Hijos del pedernal y la brea by Gerardo José Sandoval and Voices aisladas by Mario Alejandro Chavarría. Sadly, the BAM Letras award, which has recognized the work of great writers such as Arnoldo Gálvez Suárez and Valeria Cerezo has come to an end, according to F&G Editores’ director, Raul Figueroa Sarti.

Weekly News Roundup, 6 May 2016: The Best. Translated. Book.

May 6, 2016 | in News | by Patty Nash

This week's literary highlights from across the world

Happy Friday, Asymptote! The biggest news this week is that of the official announcement of Three Percent‘s Best Translated Book Award winners, so we won’t keep you waiting: in the fiction category, Mexican novelist Yuri Herrera’s Signs Preceding the End of the World, translated by Lisa Dillman, took home top honors (you can read a review the blog published preceding the award here—we totally called it). And in the poetry category, Rilke Shake by Brazilian author Angélica Freitas and translated by Hilary Kaplan snagged top honors. Big congratulations to the winning writers, translators, publishers, editors, and readers! READ MORE…

Contributor:

Patty Nash

Tags:

award
btba
editing
Fiction
News
roundup

Weekly News Roundup, 6 November 2015: Top Notch, Middle Notch

November 6, 2015 | in News | by Patty Nash

Highlights, lowlights, and mid-lights in literary news from around the world.

Happy Friday, Asymptote. Hard to believe a week has already passed since the American Literary Translators Association conference in Tucson, Arizona—but it has, and the National Translation Award-winners have been announced: prose honors went to William M. Hutchins’s translation from the Arabic of The New Waw: Saharan Oasis, and Pierre Joris’s iteration of the later poems of famed German poet Paul Celan—collected in an edition titled Breathturn into Timestead—won the poetry bid.

Meanwhile, the Lucien Stryk Prize, which focuses on Asian-language translations, went to Eleanor Goldman, who snagged top prose honors for her translation of Something Crosses my Mind by Wang Xiaoni, translated from the Chinese (be sure to read some of Goodman’s Wang Xiaoni translations in our July 2014 issue here!). And the Italian Prose in Translation Award went to Anne Milano Appel, for her translation of Blindly, by Claudio Magris. Congrats to all!

Asymptote Honored at London Book Fair 2015

April 15, 2015 | in News | by Rosie Clarke

Spoiler alert: we won the International Translation Initiative Award!

Greetings from sunny London!

This week is shaping up to be very exciting for Asymptote, as yesterday evening we were honoured with the 2015 London Book Fair’s International Literary Translation Initiative Award. This is undoubtedly a very momentous occasion for us, both personally and professionally, as this prestigious prize recognizes excellence in the field of literary translation, awarded to an organisation that has “succeeded in raising the profile of literature in translation, promoting literary translators, and encouraging new translators and translated works.” Not only is this the first time a Singaporean organization has been honored at the London Book Fair, but also the first time Singapore has been represented altogether. READ MORE…

Contributor:

Rosie Clarke

Place:

London

Tags:

Weekly News Roundup, 3rd October 2014: Bad Beginnings, But Is this the Year for Murakami?

October 3, 2014 | in News | by Patty Nash

This week's literary highlights from across the world

Beginning the weekly roundup is often, well, awkward. But I’d like to think my overtures are not quite as cringe-inducing as these ten worst openers in (English-language) literature.

On that note, if you feel like clicking away from this post to go do something more “productive,” don’t abandon your procrastination so quickly—it turns out the oft-reviled quality of procrastination isn’t so bad for you after all. Speaking of putting things off, while I personally didn’t study for the math portion of my GRE, I passed with (relatively) flying colors. Wonder why, but habits of polyglottism may have something to do with it. READ MORE…

Contributor:

Patty Nash

Tags:

Weekly News Roundup, 14th March 2014: BTBA (yay!), Illustrated texts

March 14, 2014 | in News | by Patty Nash

A look at some of the most important literary news of the past week

We report on book prize-awarding every week here at the Roundup, but it isn’t often that we’re so giddy to see some nominations: our friends at Three Percent have announced the longlist for the 2014 Best Translated Book Award, awarded in categories of both fiction and poetry. We’re especially happy to see the remarkably diverse longlist include several Asymptote alums, past and present: our very own Howard Goldblatt, Asymptote contributing editor, is up for his translation of Mo Yan’s Sandalwood Death (read Goldblatt’s recent essay about his relationship with author Huang Chunming here!), Mircea Cărtărescu, longlisted for Blinding (excerpted in our October 2013 issue), Arnon Grunberg for Tirza (Grunberg’s piece on J.M. Coetzee here), last year’s winner Lászlo Krasznahorkai for Seibobo Here Below (read his remarkable short prose in our July 2013 issue, translated by blog contributor Ottilie Mulzet), Javier Marías’ The Infatuations, translated by the venerable Margaret Jull Costa (interviewed here), Stig Sætterbakken’s Through the Night (don’t miss our review from our January issue), and many, many more—phew! One thing’s for sure: we don’t envy the difficult decisions those judges have got to make in the coming weeks.