The Academy of American Poets has extended the deadline for its Raiziss/de Palchi Book Award, a five-thousand-dollar award given for an English translation of a book of Italian poetry. Publishers may now submit books through January 30.
The judges for this year's prize are Jennifer Scappettone, a poet and professor of English at University of Chicago; Paolo Valesio, professor of Italian literature at Columbia University; and Lawrence Venuti, a professor of English who works in literary translation at Temple University.
The book prize alternates with a fellowship given to a translator of Italian poetry embarking on a specific project. Past winners of the awards (no winner was selected for the fellowship in 2009) are:
2008 Book Award
Patrick Barron
The Selected Poetry and Prose of Andrea Zanzotto
2007 Fellowship
Adria Bernardi
Small Talk by Rafaello Baldini
2006 Book Prize
John DuVal
Tales of Trilussa by Carlo Alberto Salustri
2005 Fellowship
Ann Snodgrass
Selected Poems of Vittorio Sereni
2004
Andrew Frisardi
The Selected Poems of Giuseppe Ungaretti
2003 Fellowship
Michael Palma
Selected Poems of Giovanni Raboni
2002 Book Prize
Stephen Sartarelli
Songbook: The Selected Poems of Umberto Saba
2001 Fellowship
Emanuel di Pasquale
Sharing a Trip: Selected Poems by Silvio Ramat
2000 Book Prize
John P. Welle and Ruth Feldman
Peasants Wake for Fellini's Casanova by Andrea Zanzotto
1999 Fellowship
Geoffrey Brock
Disaffections: Complete Poems 1930–1950 by Cesare Pavese
1998 Book Prize
Michael Palma
The Man I Pretend to Be: The Colloquies and Selected Poems of Guido Gozzano
1997 Fellowship
Anthony Molino
Esercizi di tiptologia by Valerio Magrelli
1996 Book Prize
W. S. Di Piero
This Strange Joy: Selected Poems of Sandro Penna
This month, the Academy is also open to submissions to the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award for English translations, published in 2009, of books of poetry originally written in any language. The deadline is December 31.
PEN American Center and the French-American Foundation are also accepting entries to their respective translation book prizes. Publishers, agents, or translators may submit books published this year by December 14 for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, given for a poetry collection, and the PEN Translation Prize, given for a book of poetry or prose. The French-American Foundation awards two translation prizes for a book of fiction and a book of nonfiction (including creative nonfiction) originally in French; the deadline for translations published in 2009 is December 31.
For writers currently working on a translation project, the National Endowment for the Arts is open to applications for its translation fellowships of up to twenty five thousand dollars until January 7. Buona fortuna!