New York, February 2, 2005 — The Academy of American Poets announced today that Ann Snodgrass has been selected as the recipient of the 2004 Raiziss/de Palchi Fellowship. This $20,000 prize, which is awarded every other year for a translation of modern Italian poetry, is given to enable an American translator to travel, study, or otherwise advance a significant work-in-progress. The award will allow Ms. Snodgrass to complete her translation of the selected poems of Vittorio Sereni. She also receives a six-week residency at the American Academy in Rome. The judges for the award were Michael Palma, Phillis Levin and Charles Martin.
Ann Snodgrass has received awards for her work from the Fulbright Foundation, the PEN American Center, the Massachusetts Arts Lottery, the Utah Arts Council, the Chester H. Jones Foundation and San Francisco State University's Poetry Center and Poetry Archives. Her poems and translations have appeared in the New Republic, Paris Review, Partisan Review, Poetry, Grand Street, Harvard Review, and American Poetry Review, among other national magazines. A collection of her translations of the early poems of the Italian poet Luciano Erba, The Hippopotamus, was published by Guernica Press in 2003. Her own book of poems, Portal, was published in 2002, and her book of critical essays, Knowing Noise: The English Poems of Amelia Rosselli, appeared in Peter Lang's Italian Cultural Studies: Literature in History series. Currently, she teaches writing in the College of Arts and Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The Raiziss/de Palchi Translation Awards Fund was established by a bequest of $400,000 to the New York Community Trust by Sonia Raiziss Giop, a poet, translator, and long-time editor of the literary magazine Chelsea. The Trust has selected the Academy to administer the awards. In addition to the fellowship, the awards include a $5,000 book prize, given in odd-numbered years for the translation into English of a significant work of modern Italian poetry. Publishers may submit books published anytime in the past (not necessarily in the last year), but only books by living translators are eligible. Self-published books are not accepted. The deadline for submissions to the 2005 Raiziss/de Palchi Book Prize is November 1, 2005. To receive the guidelines, send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to the Academy, or visit our website at. The competition for the next fellowship will take place in 2006.
The Academy of American Poets was founded in 1934 to support American poets at all stages of their careers and to foster the appreciation of contemporary poetry. The preeminent organization in the country dedicated to the art of poetry, the Academy sponsors programs nationally. These include the Academy Fellowship, the Wallace Stevens Award, the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, the James Laughlin Award, the Walt Whitman Award, the Raiziss/de Palchi Translation Award, the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award, poetry prizes at 180 colleges and universities, and the American Poets Fund and the Atlas Fund, which provide financial assistance to poets and non-commercial publishers of poetry, respectively. The Academy also sponsors National Poetry Month (April), the largest literary celebration in the world; the Online Poetry Classroom, an educational resource and online teaching community for high school teachers; and the Poetry Audio Archive, a collection of audio recordings of poetry readings. Additionally, the Academy maintains one of the liveliest and most comprehensive poetry sites on the Internet.
Since 1924, The New York Community Trust has been the community foundation of the New York metropolitan area, an aggregate of 1,700 funds created by charitable individuals, families, and corporations, to improve the quality of life for all the area's residents. Grants made from these funds meet the changing needs of children, youth, and families; aid in community development; improve the environment; promote health; assist people with special needs; and support education, arts, and the humanities. In 2004, The Trust made grants of $139 million from assets of $1.8 billion.