They've announced the recipients of the 2012 PEN Literary Awards.
Among the awards of interest: the PEN Translation Prize went to Bill Johnston for his translation of Wiesław Myśliwski's Stone Upon Stone (which, you'll recall, also won the Best Translated Book Award earlier this year) and Margaret Sayers Peden gets the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation (which is only awarded every three years).
My new favorite American literary award, however, has got to be the PEN/Edward and Lily Tuck Award for Paraguayan Literature, which goes: "To the author of a major work of Paraguayan literature not yet translated into English". It went to Versos de Amor y de Locura by Delfina Acosta (though unfortunately they don't note who the runner(s)-up were ...). (Judge for yourself: you can read Versos de Amor y de Locura (in the original) online.) I think we can all agree that Paraguayan literature gets way too little attention -- quick, name your top three Paraguayan authors ... (okay, we can all agree on Augusto Roa Bastos as number one, but after that ... ?) -- so this is great in getting it a tiny bit of attention.
Among the awards of interest: the PEN Translation Prize went to Bill Johnston for his translation of Wiesław Myśliwski's Stone Upon Stone (which, you'll recall, also won the Best Translated Book Award earlier this year) and Margaret Sayers Peden gets the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation (which is only awarded every three years).
My new favorite American literary award, however, has got to be the PEN/Edward and Lily Tuck Award for Paraguayan Literature, which goes: "To the author of a major work of Paraguayan literature not yet translated into English". It went to Versos de Amor y de Locura by Delfina Acosta (though unfortunately they don't note who the runner(s)-up were ...). (Judge for yourself: you can read Versos de Amor y de Locura (in the original) online.) I think we can all agree that Paraguayan literature gets way too little attention -- quick, name your top three Paraguayan authors ... (okay, we can all agree on Augusto Roa Bastos as number one, but after that ... ?) -- so this is great in getting it a tiny bit of attention.