The Polish Book Institute

The American edition of Mikołaj Grynberg's Rejwach, translated by Sean Gasper Bye (“I'd Like to Say Sorry, But There's No One to Say Sorry To”), and Krystyna Dąbrowska's selection of poems Tideline, translated by Karen Kovacik, Antonia Lloyd-Jones, and Mira Rosenthal, were included in the long list of translations nominated for the prestigious National Translation Award.

The National Translation Award is a distinction granted annually by the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA).

The translation of Mikołaj Grynberg's Rejwach was published in 2022 by The New Press publishing house, which also published, among others, Nobel laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah. In turn, the publisher of the collection Tideline is Zephyr Press.

Finalists for the National Translation Award will be announced on 11 October. The winners should be announced on 11 November.

This year’s prose judges are Natascha Bruce, Shelley Frisch, Jason Grunebaum, Sawad Hussain, and Lytton Smith. This year’s judges for poetry are Pauline Fan, Heather Green, and Shook.

The 2023 National Translation Award in Prose Longlist

• 1,000 Coils of Fear, Olivia Wenzel, translated from German by Priscilla Layne, Catapult 
• The Antarctica of Love, Sara Stridsberg, translated from Swedish by Deborah Bragan-Turner, Farrar, Straus and Giroux 
• The Artisans: A Vanishing Chinese Village, Shen Fuyu, translated from Chinese by Jeremy Tiang Astra House 
• Chinatown, Thuận, translated from Vietnamese by Nguyễn An Lý, New Directions | Tilted Axis Press 
• Concerning My Daughter, Kim Hye-jin, translated from Korean by Jamie Chang, Restless Books 
• Happy Stories, Mostly, Norman Erikson Pasaribu, translated from Indonesian by Tiffany Tsao, Giramondo Publishing | Tilted Axis Press 
• I’d Like to Say Sorry, But There’s No One to Say Sorry To, Mikołaj Grynberg, translated from Polish by Sean Gasper Bye, The New Press 
• Life and Political Reality: Two Novellas, Shahidul Zahir, translated from Bangla by V. Ramaswamy and Shahroza Nahrin, HarperCollins India 
• So Distant from My Life, Monique Ilboudo, translated from French by Yarri Kamara, Tilted Axis Press 
• Spadework for a Palace, László Krasznahorkai, translated from Hungarian by John Batki, New Directions 
• Stories of the True, Jeyamohan, translated from Tamil by Priyamvada Ramkumar, Juggernaut 
• Valli: A Novel, Sheela Tomy, translated from Malayalam by Jayasree Kalathil, HarperCollins India

The 2023 National Translation Award in Poetry Longlist

• Cicada, Phoebe Giannisi, translated from Greek by Brian Sneeden, New Directions 
• Claus and the Scorpion, Lara Dopazo Ruibal, translated from Galician by Laura Cesarco Eglin, co•im•press 
• Flight and Metamorphosis, Nelly Sachs, translated from German by Joshua Weiner and Linda B. Parshall, Farrar, Straus and Giroux 
• In the Same Light: 200 Poems for Our Century from the Migrants and Exiles of the Tang Dynasty, translated from Chinese by Wong May, The Song Cave | Carcanet 
• Let Us Believe in the Beginning of the Cold Season, Forough Farrokhzad, translated from Persian by Elizabeth T. Gray, Jr., New Directions 
• Names and Rivers, Shuri Kido, translated from Japanese by Tomoyuki Endo and Forrest Gander Copper, Canyon Press 
• The Rust of History, Sotero Rivera Avilés, translated from Spanish by Raquel Salas Rivera, Circumference Books 
• The Threshold, Iman Mersal, translated from Arabic by Robyn Creswell, Farrar, Straus and Giroux 
• Tideline, Krystyna Dąbrowska, translated from Polish by Karen Kovacik, Antonia Lloyd-Jones, and Mira Rosenthal, Zephyr Press 
• Underfoot, Niillas Holmberg, translated from Northern Sámi by Jennifer Kwon Dobbs and Johanna Domokos, White Pine Press 
• The Water People, Vénus Khoury-Ghata, translated from French by Marilyn Hacker, Poetry Translation Centre 
• When the Night Agrees to Speak to Me, Ananda Devi, translated from French by Kazim Ali, Phoneme / Deep Vellum

The ALTA Award is the only award in the United States based on a meticulous analysis of the source text set against an English translation.