National Book Awards to Open to Translated Works

The National Book Foundation Board for the prestigious US prize has announced that the awards will establish a fifth National Book Award for translated works of fiction, and nonfiction published in the USA.

The prize will honour one work of fiction, or nonfiction that has been translated into English in the US, and begins at the 69th National Book Awards this November.

The decision was made after a vote by the board in which it was voted unanimously that the fifth award should be added. Now the National Book Awards will recognise works written anywhere in the world, but translated in the US, adding to the award new voices and perspectives.

The award will be known as the National Book Award for Translated Literature, honouring the author and translator, and hopes to broaden readership for global voices. The fifth category will join the four established categories, fiction, nonfiction, poetry and young people’s literature as a permanent prize.

Executive director for the National Book Foundation, Lisa Lucas said of the new award “We are a nation of immigrants, and we should never stop seeking connection and insight from the myriad cultures that consistently influence and inspire us. We want American readers to deeply value an inclusive, big-picture point of view, and the National Book Award for Translated Literature is part of a commitment to that principle. The addition of this award lends crucial visibility to works that have the power to touch us as American readers in search of broadened perspective.”

The new category is the first change to the National Book Awards since 1996 when the first National Book Award for Young People’s Literature was added. Submissions for the new award will open at the same time as for all other categories, on March 7th and both writer and translator must be living at the beginning of the awards cycle. Neither writer or publisher is required to be a US citizen, but the work must be published in the USA in the year of the award submission (though the original publishing year isn’t important).

The National Book Awards longlist will be announced on September 10th, finalists on October 10th, with the winners announced at an invitation only ceremony in New York city on November 14th. You can find the 2017 National Book Award winners here.