The International Writing Program is pleased to share the following announcement on behalf of the 2024 Translators’ Choice Award judging committee:

 

The 2024 Translators’ Choice Award both honors and celebrates literary achievement with a focus on literary translation. This year, the committee consisted of seven writers and translators affiliated with the University of Iowa. The novels nominated for the prize fulfilled the criteria of (1) being published by an Anglophone press in the past year and (2) being the author’s first novel to appear in English translation. Over the course of ten weeks, the committee read and discussed each novel, while simultaneously deliberating on judging criteria for the prize. The shortlist and winning translation were decided through two rounds of discussion, followed by a vote. 

 

It was enormously important to the committee to recognize a certain representation of minority languages, small publishers and underrepresented topics. The committee emphasized their intention of selecting a work of high social value. Enthusiasm and excitement about content and the experimentation of craft were key factors in casting the deciding votes. Each jury member accentuated how critical it was to them to select a winner that they would wholeheartedly recommend.

 

After extensive deliberations, we are thrilled to announce the shortlist and winner of the 2024 Translators’ Choice Award. Balsam Karam’s The Singularity, Jeferson Tenório’s The Dark Side of Skin, and Leesa Gazi’s Good Girls were shortlisted for their outstanding contributions to the sphere of literary translation. 

 

(Amazon Crossing, 2023)

 

Good Girls is a methodical and beautifully crafted narrative about toxic family dynamics and unrestrained female autonomy. Narratives crash and blend as the story follows forty-year-old Lovely in her fight to escape the possessive and controlling grasp of her mother, who has kept her and her sister, Beauty, under lock-and-key their entire lives. Leesa Gazi weaves together themes of class, race, and gender in this artfully sly debut novel, translated by Shabnam Nadiya.
 

(Feminist Press, 2024)

 

Balsam Karam’s English-language debut The Singularity is a poignant exploration of loss, from loss of loved ones to loss of country, culture, and language. Her formally inventive prose evokes the disorienting experience of grief and exile, and is beautiful and lyrical at the same time. Translator Saskia Vogel embraces Karam’s stunning language, creating a powerfully non-conformist and poetic voice. 

 

(Charco Press, 2024)

 

In The Dark Side of Skin, Jeferson Tenório renders a careful portrait of self-construction in response to familial brokenness, language, literature, and racism in southern Brazil. Pedro narrates the story of his family, recounting generations of rupture, desire, and agency, as he seeks to understand his father. Bruna Dantas Lobato’s agile translation traverses myriad viewpoints and temporal situations with precision and empathy. Seamless in its harmony of form and narrative, the novel depicts the raw reality of a Porto Alegre where characters must confront histories of family and country before determining their own futures.