Eight years ago now (whoa!) I was one of the lucky young translators to get an ALTA Travel Fellowship. It was good money, huge encouragement at a precarious and impressionable time, and a great entrée into the world of literary translation by way of a conference that still manages to gather many of the country’s best literary translators each year for shoptalk, drinks, fascinating panels, and general comradery.
This coming fall, October 28-31, the conference will be in Tucson, with a theme of Translation & Traffic. This is not a conference that happens in a warm city very often, so seize the day (the last one I remember was Pasadena 2009). The $1000 should cover airfare and lodging from most places in the U.S.
Applications are now being accepted for the 2015 ALTA Travel Fellowship Awards. Â If you’re a newcomer to translation, no matter your age, you should try your hand! Each year, four to six fellowships in the amount of $1,000 are awarded to beginning (unpublished or minimally published) translators to help them pay for travel expenses to the annual ALTA conference. Â (When I applied, I had two lit mag credits and a handful of comics to my name.)
At the conference, ALTA Fellows are invited to read their translated work at a keynote event, giving them an opportunity to present their translations to an audience of translators, authors, editors, and publishers from around the world.
ALTA Travel Fellowships are funded by a combination of member dues and private donations, often generously provided by established translators and other devoted supporters of literary translation. If you are interested in learning more about how you can support this important program, please contact Managing Director Erica Mena at erica@literarytranslators.org
Applications must include:
- a cover letter explaining your interest in attending the conference
- current CV / resumé
- up to 10 pages of translated work (poetry or prose, double spaced)
- the corresponding original language text
The judges for the 2015 ALTA Travel Fellowship are Italian translator emeritus Geoffrey Brock, who teaches at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville; Â Jennifer Croft, Founding Editor of The Buenos Aires Review and 2015 NEA Translation Grantee; and poet Sidney Wade, editor at Subtropics and professor at the University of Florida Gainesville.
SUBMIT HERE by June 1st on Submittable!
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