writer Translator
An autobiographical picaresque that reconstructs the exhilarating yet often terrifying experiences of individual East Germans in that brief period between the collapse of the Communist regime and reunification. Its central character, a 26-year-old aspiring poet, drifts through East Berlin’s anarchic underground squatter scene after his parents abandon their home and flee to a refugee camp in the West.
The New York Times 12/6/2024
The American Association of Teachers of Slavic and Eastern European Languages has shortlisted distant transit for the 2024 Best Literary Translation Award.
Winners will be announced in February.
The six books that constitute this year’s shortlist—Yevgenia Beloruset’s War Diary, translated by Greg Nissan, Thomas Brussig’s The Short End of the Sonnenallee, translated by Jonathan Franzen and Jenny Watson, Max Czollek’s De-Integrate, translated by Jon Cho-Polizzi, E.T.A. Hoffmann’s The Golden Pot, translated by Peter Wortsman, Florian Illies’ Love in a Time of Hate, translated by Simon Pare, and Ernst Jünger’s On the Marble Cliffs, translated by Tess Lewis—take us from marble cliffs in the early twentieth century, to a romp through real-life love stories in that same troubled era, to marvelous tales of the uncanny in the Romantic past, to a narrative of the Ukraine invasion in progress right now, to a concrete-and-barbed wire wall in the waning days of the German Democratic Republic, to a polemic about figurative walls that continue to define, divide, and de-integrate us.
Read the Goethe Institut announcement here.
From the Seagull Books Newsletter
This year I’m celebrating WiT with a regional flair—for me August 2024 is ‘Austrian Women in Translation Month’. My works-in-progress are two novellas by the doyennes of contemporary Austrian literature—Ingeborg Bachmann’s The Honditsch Cross and Christine Lavant’s The Changeling—and two novels by writers who were deeply influenced by them—Maja Haderlap’s Shadow Women and Laura Freudenthaler’s Arson. Look for them in August next year . . . if not sooner!”
The American Association of Teachers of Slavic and Eastern European Languages has longlisted distant transit for the 2024 translation award.
Shortlists will be announced in December.
Tess Lewis on Translation, Micro-fiction and books on translation - Episode 105
In this Episode , Tess Lewis spoke about Translating Micro fiction, her marathon project 'Notes', Seagull books, and some really useful books on the art of translation.
Society of Authors Announcement
Bringing artistry to both verse and prose, this year’s collection blends diverse content, captivating register, tone, and style with exquisitely pertinent language. The ingenuity of these exceptional prose disclose personal tales of relationships and sorrow, of justice and equality, of friendship across generations, of war and love, of loneliness, of dramatic escape, while balancing the thin prospect of humour, change, and hope – they already belong to the classics. Jury statement
The Friedrich Ulfers Prize was established in 2013 and is awarded annually by Deutsches Haus at New York University to a leading publisher, writer, critic, translator, or scholar who has championed the advancement of German-language literature in the United States. The prize, which is endowed with a $5000 grant, has previously been awarded to Riky Stock, Jill Schoolman, Susan Bernofsky, Barbara Perlmutter, Barbara Epler, Burton Pike, Robert Weil, Sara Bershtel, and Carol Brown Janeway. The Friedrich Ulfers Prize is Festival Neue Literatur’s testimony to the rising importance of German-language literature in America.
Following a competitive application cycle, we are delighted to welcome five brilliant thinkers to the Library in the coming year. From translation to avant-garde jazz to the Haitian Revolution, the projects they will develop showcase both excellence and variety. They join an impressive roster of intellectuals and authors who have been awarded the Visiting Fellowship in previous years, from Mark Braude to Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Our warmest congratulations to 2023—24 Visiting Fellows Adam Shatz and Christian Campbell, and 2023—24 Scholars of Note Vanessa Onwuemezi, Lauren Oyler, and Tess Lewis.
ALP announcement here
STAR 111, forthcoming from And Other Stories is one of a record 21 titles from 19 countries and 18 languages to win a 2022 PEN Translates award.
“The thirty-two German-to-English book-length translations submitted for this year’s Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize are most impressive in their scope, their storytelling, and their masterful language, and from this remarkable group of texts, the five that constitute this year’s shortlist stand out for their exquisite and compelling wordsmithery.” From the Jury Statement
Guter Geist der Literatur: Ein Besuch bei der amerikanischen Übersetzerin Tess Lewis, die derzeit fellow der American Academy in Berlin ist. Von Andreas Platthaus
Wie übersetzt man Virginia Woolf ins Englische? Man könnte über die Frage lachen, aber das kann sich Tess Lewis nicht leisten. Denn genau dieser Frage muss sie sich bald stellen. Noch ist sie mit der Übertragungsarbeit an Lutz Seilers jüngstem Roman, „Stern 111“, beschäftigt, doch danach steht ein französisches Buch auf der Agenda der amerikanischen Übersetzerin: Cécile Wajsbrots „Nevermore“, dessen von Anne Weber besorgte deutsche Fassung gerade den Übersetzerpreis der Leipziger Buchmesse gewonnen hat…
Nominations include 30 novels in translation, spanning 19 languages, with works nominated by 94 libraries from 40 countries across Africa, Europe, Asia, the US & Canada, South America and Australia & New Zealand. 16 are debut novels. If the winning book has been translated, the author receives €75,000 and the translator receives €25,000. Complete list of nominees
Kraft on Dublin Literary Award Longlist:
An entertainingly evil novel: Richard Kraft, the eponymous hero and a professor of rhetoric, participates in a competition to answer a literal million-dollar-question that could free him from his misery. A satire on neoliberal values and the merits of technology.
The National Endowment of the Arts has awarded Tess Lewis a fellowship to support the translation from the German of the essay collection In the Forest of the Metropoles by Karl-Markus Gauß (b. 1954), who has written more than two dozen books and numerous articles and essays for German, Swiss, and Austrian newspapers and magazines. In the Forest of the Metropoles chronicles the diversity and wealth of languages, cultures, and individuals, predominantly from Eastern Europe, that have played a formative role in shaping contemporary Europe but now risk being forgotten.
https://www.arts.gov/impact/literary-arts/translation-fellows/tess-lewis
Epic Annette, forthcoming in August 2022 with The Indigo Press received a PEN Translates Award.
Books from 15 countries and 13 languages have won English PEN’s flagship translation awards. Books are selected for PEN Translates awards on the basis of outstanding literary quality, the strength of the publishing project, and their contribution to UK biblio-diversity.
The four books that constitute this year’s shortlist—Judith Schalansky’sAn Inventory of Losses, translated by Jackie Smith, Jonas Lüscher’sKraft, translated by Tess Lewis, Volker Ullrich’sHitler: Downfall, 1939-1945, translated by Jefferson Chase, and Sasha Marianna Salzmann’sBeside Myself, translated by Imogen Taylor—stood out for their ingenuity, beauty, and accuracy in capturing the letter and spirit of their respective source texts.
On episode 184 of The Quarantine Tapes, guest host Naveen Kishore is joined by Tess Lewis. Tess is a translator and she and Naveen dig into how she has experienced translation during this time of quarantine. Tess explains how she sees translation as an act of intimacy and a responsible, responsive act.
Naveen and Tess touch on the recent controversy around the Dutch translation of Amanda Gorman’s work and discuss the politics and ethics of translation. They talk about the incredible diversity that exists within languages and how translation can work to give smaller languages their due. Tess ends the episode by reading from two of the writers whose work she has translated, Philippe Jaccottet and Maja Haderlap.
Reflections on translating Karl-Markus Gauß’s essays and the beauty of Vienna
© 2015 Tess Lewis
