Winners of 2015 Best Translated Book Awards

Members of the BTBA 2015 Jury announce the winners at BEA (From left: Jeremy Garber, Powell’s Books; Katrine Øgaard Jensen, Asymptote; Chad Post, Open Letter Books; and Bill Martin, translator)

The winners of the 8th annual Best Translated Book Awards were announced at BookExpo America this year.

By Hannah Johnson

Chad Post of Open Letter Books hosted an event at BookExpo America on Wednesday to announce the two winners of the 2015 Best Translated Book Awards. The fiction winner is The Last Lover by Can Xue (translated from the Chinese by Annelise Finegan Wasmoen and published by Yale University Press, and the poetry winner is Diorama by Rocío Cerón (translated from the Spanish by Anna Rosenwong and published by Phoneme).

About the fiction winner, the jury said: “Journeying through a dreamworld as strange yet disquietingly familiar as Kafka’s Amerika, The Last Lover proves radiantly original. If Orientalists describe an East that exists only in the Western imagination, Can Xue describes its shadow, offering a beguiling dream of a Chinese West. Annelise Finegan Wasmoen’s translation succeeds in crafting a powerful English voice for a writer of singular imagination and insight.”

The Best Translated Book Award launched in 2007 and aims to bring attention to the best original works of international fiction and poetry published in the U.S. during the previous year. The award is underwritten by Amazon.com and each winner receives $5,000.

About the Author

Hannah Johnson

Hannah Johnson is the publisher of international book industry magazine Publishing Perspectives, which provides daily information and news about book markets around the world. In addition to building partnerships with international cultural and trade organizations, she works with the Frankfurt Book Fair to organize and support a number of its overseas initiatives. Hannah has also worked as the managing editor for an online media company, The Hooch Life, focused on craft distillers and cocktail experts. Prior to that, she worked as a project manager for the Frankfurt Book Fair’s New York office, managing various business and marketing activities.