Migratory Birds a Finalist for PEN America Translation Prize

On Wednesday, January 26, PEN America announced the finalists for its 2022 awards, which included Migratory Birds by Mariana Oliver, translated from the Spanish by Julia Sanches, for its Translation Prize. The PEN Translation Prize, judged this year by Almiro Andrade, Mayada Ibrahim, Barbara Ofosu-Somuah, and Sharon E. Rhodes, is awarded annually in recognition of a book-length work of prose translated from any language into English.

Other titles nominated for the Translation Prize this year include FEM by Magda Cârneci (Deep Vellum), translated from the Romanian by Sean Cotter; New Year by Juli Zeh (World Editions), translated from the German by Alta L. Price; The Last One: A Novel by Fatima Daas (Other Press), translated from the French by Lara Vergnaud; and Kaya Days: A Novel by Carl de Souza (Two Line Press), translated from the French by Jeffrey Zuckerman. Hear these translators in conversation with Michael Holtmann of the Center for the Art of Translation, in a virtual roundtable on February 19.

The winners will be announced at the PEN America Literary Awards Ceremony on February 28.

About Migratory Birds

In her prize-winning debut, Mexican essayist Mariana Oliver trains her gaze on migration in its many forms, moving between real cities and other more inaccessible territories: language, memory, pain, desire, and the body. With an abiding curiosity and poetic ease, Oliver leads us through the underground city of Cappadocia, explores the vicissitudes of a Berlin marked by historical fracture, recalls a shocking childhood exodus, and recreates the intimacy of the spaces we inhabit. Blending criticism, reportage, and a travel writing all her own, Oliver presents a brilliant collection of essays that asks us what it means to leave the familiar behind and make the unfamiliar our own.

Migratory Birds is part of the Undelivered Lectures series from Transit Books.