By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
See also:
US 2024 National Book Award Longlists: Young People’s Books
US 2024 Distinguished Contribution Medalist: Barbara Kingsolver
Publisher Paul Coates Wins the US 2024 Literarian Award
The Second of Five Categories’ 2024 Longlists
With its rate of submissions in this category running a bit lower than might have been expected, the United States’ National Book Foundation‘s second-released 2024 longlist is for Translated Literature.
This is the most important of the five categories for our international professional readership at Publishing Perspectives. In 2023, this category drew 141 entries from publishers, the lowest number since the 2020 competition and the second-lowest since the 2018 establishment of the Translated Literature award.
Last year’s competition drew 154 submissions, by comparison to this year’s 141. The 2022 competition drew 146. Indeed the largest year for submissions so far in Translated Literature was 2021, when publishers made 164 entries. Even in the opening year, 2018 was slightly higher than this year’s input, at 142. Only one year’s number of entries has been lower than this year’s, and that was the pandemic year of 2020, when there were just 130 submissions.
While the differences in these numbers are not large, the longtime struggle of translated literature among American consumers is a perennially painful and frequently embarrassing point for many in the States’ book community and industry. Perhaps there’s some work to do on the part of the foundation in encouraging more submissions in this still-young category.
As an added incentive, perhaps, translated literature’s recognition generally can be expected to highlight the valuable work of more independent publishers than might be the case in other traditional categories. As is logical, the large publishing houses gather much of the visibility elsewhere in the nominations, after all, something you can see, for example, in the longlist for Young People’s Literature this year.
The Translated Literature longlistees in this 75th iteration of the National Book Awards were published originally in Arabic, Danish, French, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, and Swedish.
The jurors for Translated Literature this year are Aron Aji, Jennifer Croft, Jhumpa Lahiri (chair), Gary Lovely, and Julia Sanches.
The 2024 Translated Literature Longlist
Once again, the 10 books longlisted here all appear to have their translators clearly credited on their covers. We mention this in reflection of the effort by many in the business to persuade publishers to provide proper credit to translators on book covers.
As always, the jury’s decisions are made independently of the National Book Foundation staff and board of directors and deliberations are strictly confidential.
See also:
US National Book Award: Opening to Non-US Citizens
The US National Book Foundation Issues US$350,000 in Hawthornden Grants
More from Publishing Perspectives on the National Book Awards in the United States is here and more on the huge field of international book awards and prizes is here. More from us on translation and translators is here, more on international publishing rights is here, and more on the United States’ market is here.
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