PEN/Edward and Lily Tuck Award for Paraguayan Literature
The PEN/Edward and Lily Tuck Prize for Paraguayan Literature is meant to assist with the translation of Paraguayan literature from Spanish or Guarani into English. It is open to both established and emerging Paraguayan writers. The award carries a cash stipend of $3,000 for the living author of a major work of Paraguayan literature. Another $3,000 is given to the winning translator in order to bring the work to the English-speaking world.
All winners and finalists for this award are eligible to receive PEN America’s official winner or finalist seal. If you are a publisher of a shortlisted or winning book for this award and are interested in obtaining the PEN America award seal, please write to [email protected].
Current Cycle: 2020
Honoring books published in 2019.
Submissions for the 2021 cycle open June 1, 2020.
JUDGES: Margaret Carson, Ezra E. Fitz, Susan Smith Nash, Charlotte Whittle
Featured Winner: Liz Haedo
Liz Haedo for Pieles de Papel
From the judges’ citation: “In Pieles de Papel, her debut collection of short stories, Liz Haedo captures contemporary Paraguay with cinematic intensity, immersing the reader in an experience that combines Paraguay’s transforming Guaraní culture with its persistent legacies of brutal dictatorship and war. The stories’ structure resembles Paraguayan ñandutí (Guaraní for “spiderweb”), a hand-tatted lace whose symmetrical form incorporates the intentional irregularities of individual self-expression. In artful and incisive prose, the author balances crystalline observation with beguiling ambiguity. As part of a new generation of Paraguayan writers who did not grow up under Stroessner’s dictatorship, Haedo joins a wave of younger Latin American writers who continue to reckon with an unsettling past while exploring the disturbances and cruelties of the present.”
En Español:
“En Pieles de Papel, su colección debut de cuentos cortos, Liz Haedo capta el Paraguay contemporáneo con una intensidad cinematográfica para sumergir al lector en una experiencia que combina la cultura transformadora guaraní del Paraguay con sus legados persistentes de dictadura brutal y guerra. La estructura de los cuentos se parece al ñandutí (telaraña) paraguayo, un encaje hecho a mano cuya forma simétrica incorpora las irregularidades intencionales de la autoexpresión individual. Con un estilo de prosa artístico e incisivo, la autora equilibra su observación cristalina con una ambigüedad embelesadora. Como parte de la nueva generación de autores paraguayos que no creció bajo la dictadura de Stroessner, Haedo se une a una ola de escritores latinoamericanos que sigue enfrentando un pasado desconcertante mientras que explora los disturbios y crueldades del presente.”
