Meet the Kirkus and International Writer of Courage winners

We have several awards and a shortlist to celebrate today.

Uyghur professor Rahile Dawut has been chosen as the 2023 PEN International Writer of Courage recipient.

Dawut has been missing for six years; Chinese authorities reportedly sentenced her last month to life in prison on charges of endangering state security, according to the Guardian.

The prize is selected by the PEN Pinter Prize winner — this year, author Michael Rosen.

He said he chose Dawut, an expert on Uyghur folklore, because he was "pushed towards sorrow and anger on hearing that someone could be imprisoned for precisely the kind of interest that I have."

The 2023 Kirkus Prizes were announced last night as well, with the Kirkus Reviews publisher noting that history and community emerged as themes in all the winning works, according to NPR.

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride won for fiction; Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of "Latino" by Héctor Tobar won for nonfiction; and America Redux: Visual Stories From Our Dynamic History by Ariel Aberg-Riger won for young people's literature.

The recipients each receive $50,000; nearly 11,000 books were eligible for consideration for this award.

And finally, the American Literary Translators Association announced the shortlists for the 25th annual National Translation Awards.

A prose and a poetry winner will each receive $4,000, with winners revealed November 11.

Prose 

• Chinatown, written by Thuân and translated from Vietnamese by Nguyễn An Lý

• I’d Like to Say Sorry, but There’s No One to Say Sorry To, written by Mikołaj Grynberg and translated from Polish by Sean Gasper Bye

• So Distant From My Life, written by Monique Ilboudo and translated from French by Yarri Kamara

• Spadework for a Palace, written by László Krasznahorkai and translated from Hungarian by John Batki

• Stories of the True, written by B. Jeyamohan and translated from Tamil by Priyamvada Ramkumar

• Valli, written by Sheela Tomy and translated from Malayalam by Jayasree Kalathil

Poetry

• Cicada, written by Phoebe Giannisi and translated from Greek by Brian Sneeden

• Flight and Metamorphosis, written by Nelly Sachs and translated from German by Joshua Weiner with Linda B. Parshall

• In the Same Light: 200 Poems for Our Century From the Migrants & Exiles of the Tang Dynasty, written by 37 Tang poets and translated from Chinese by Wong May

• The Threshold, written by Iman Mersal and translated from Arabic by Robyn Creswell

• The Water People, written by Venus Khoury-Ghata and translated from French by Marilyn Hacker

• When the Night Agrees to Speak to Me, written by Ananda Devi and translated from French by Kazim Ali