Russian translators get a shot at the Joseph Brodsky/Stephen Spender Prize and Ms. magazine celebrates its 40th with an essay contest
Thursday, July 21st, 2011
Two recent emails, alerting me to two very different kinds of literary contests:
1. The first commemorates the long friendship between Joseph Brodsky and Stephen Spender. The Joseph Brodsky/Stephen Spender Prize, launched by Maria Brodsky and Natasha Spender, also celebrates the rich tradition of Russian poetry.
Details are here. You supply the original Russian, your translation, and some commentary. But do you translate a long novel, an essay, a few poems? It doesn’t say. Up to you, I guess.
The contest offers three prizes: £1,500 (first), £1,000 (second) and £500.
Entries must be received by August 31. Judges of the 2011 competition are: Sasha Dugdale, Catriona Kelly, Paul Muldoon.
(Valentina Polukhina, one of the supporters of the contest, wrote to let me know.)
2. Ms. magazine is celebrating its 40th birthday, and you are invited, too.
A group of Stanford faculty and Ms. editors are inviting you to submit a 150-word essay about one of the magazine’s 40 covers.
Ten $100 cash prizes will be awarded for the best short essays. Entries will be judged on originality, vision, awareness of feminist issues and quality of expression. Winning entries will be displayed alongside the Ms. covers on the Stanford campus in January 2012.
The contest will run from August 1, 2011 – October 15, 2011. Click here for more details.
There’s more: In January 2012 at Stanford, Ms. founding editor, Gloria Steinem, will offer a keynote address, with a month-long series of events that looks back on the history of the magazine.
The contest and the month-long series of events are sponsored by Stanford’s American Studies Program, the Clayman Institute for Gender Research, and the Program in Feminist Studies, in conjunction with Ms. Magazine.
(This invite courtesy Adrienne Johnson and Shelley Fisher Fishkin.)
