The winners of the inaugural Neukom Institute Literary Arts Awards in Speculative Fiction are:
Debut: Best Worst American by Juan Martinez (Small Beer Press)
Open Category (two winners):
Central Station by Lavie Tidhar (Tachyon Publications)
On the Edge of Gone by Corinne Duyvis (Amulet/Abrams)
Each winner receives a $5,000 honorarium and will participate in an event at Dartmouth College that will include a panel on speculative fiction.
Principal judge Maria Dahvana Headley said that the winning books "prioritize valuable human relationships as prods to improvement of technologically and scientifically complex futures. The works are warm and hopeful, and they point to the true nature of science, one in which solving human problems and failings is the goal, not shrinking the need for human engagement."
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A shortlist has been released for the £15,000 (about $20,225) Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize for best published novel, presented by the Wilbur and Niso Smith Foundation. The winner will be honored during a ceremony in September in London's Stationers' Hall. This year's shortlisted titles are:
Nucleus by Rory Clements
Sugar Money by Jane Harris
No Good Brother by Tyler Keevil
A Necessary Evil by Abir Mukherjee
Looking for Evelyn by Maggie Ritchie
Pendragon by James Wilde
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Nick Andrews has won the 2018 Gutekunst Prize of the Friends of Goethe for the best translation of the short story "Selbstbildnis mit Geschirrtuch" ("Self-portrait with Dishtowel") by Terézia Mora. The prize aims to "identify outstanding young translators of German literature into English and assist them in establishing contact with the translation and publishing communities." The prize will be presented on June 7 at the Goethe-Institut New York.
Andrews graduated from Dartmouth College as a senior fellow researching contemporary German theater, after which he moved to Berlin, where he worked for several years as a classical pianist and freelance translator.
"When I began translating, I quickly realized that the narrative rhythm of the text was essential to preserving this delicate balance of disparate tones, the shift between bitter afterthoughts and nostalgic reflections on the past that become increasingly fragmented as the narrator approaches a breakdown," Andrews said. "Colloquial language always presents a particular challenge for the translator--above all, I wanted to reflect the surprising lightness of the text, which manages to be both acerbic and naïve, and the faithful way it depicts the internal monologue of a person too lost not to laugh."