PEN American Center recently initiated an award that will recognize and fund the translation of Paraguayan literature. The organization announced today that novelist Lily Tuck has donated one hundred thousand dollars to establish the prize, which will award three thousand dollars to a living Paraguayan author for a major work and, in the following year, the same amount to a translator. The inaugural prize will be given in 2010.
Tuck was inspired to found the prize following the release of her National Book Award–winning 2004 novel set in Paraguay during the nineteenth century. "In gratitude for the enthusiasm and welcome both my novel, The News from Paraguay, and I received in Paraguay, I am delighted to offer PEN a translation prize for both established and emerging Paraguayan writers and thereby enhance literature worldwide," she is quoted as saying in a PEN press release. "Writing is hard and lonely work, and I believe in writers reaching across international borders and language barriers to support one another."
PEN is inviting Paraguayan publishers to submit five copies of a work in Spanish or Guaraní along with a letter of nomination to PEN Paraguay by December 15. Entry information is posted on the PEN Web site.