LOIS ROTH ENDOWMENT

Endowment grantee Abigail Sebaly, settling in to her Fulbright year in Australia studying dance and dance curatorship, writes an engaging early report. "My Fulbright research here in Australia is focused on contemporary dance and arts curation, and the additional Endowment funds, in part, enabled me to attend a unique arts festival in Tasmania called Ten Days on the Island. The festival brings the work of a wide variety of internationally-respected artists to communities all across Tasmania. During my visit, for example, I went to the town of Bridport (population: 500, with no stoplights!), to see an Italian music ensemble play live accompaniment to old documentary films from the Aeolian Islands (Stromboli, Lipari, Panarea etc.). The fact that these performances were being presented in such remote communities was extraordinary. I've never experienced anything else like it." (15.04.09)

The Australian program, with the help of the Fulbright Commission in Canberra, picked up again with a post-arrival research grant to Columbia and Harvard Law graduate Amos Jones for work at Melbourne University’s School of Law on the Australian experience of constitutionalism and its US links. At the University of Sydney, a new Center for American Studies, funded by an Australian government grant, was announced by Prime Minister John Howard at an Embassy ceremony in Washington, where board member Harriet Mayor Fulbright was made a member of the Order of Australia. The growth of this well-endowed Center will be of importance to us, as we seek to deepen the study of the U.S. in Australia. (15.05.08)

Report from the end of May 2009

At the Sofia Book Fair in December, we had a double win with the Dyankov Award for Translation Prize (published translation of a literary novel from English), divided between recent books by Cynthia Ozick and John Banville. We received even more publicity from the Bulgarian press than last year. We're now preparing for the second annual Sozopol Fiction Seminar, which in addition to generous support from the Endowment is receiving support this year from the US Embassy, the American Foundation for Bulgaria, and the Bulgarian Ministry of Culture.

The seminar will be held June 4-8 with special guest lectures from American novelist and essayist Josip Novakovich and Bulgarian novelist and poet Georgi Gospodinov. It will also be attended by editors from Little, Brown and Company and Dalkey Archive Press on the US side, and a good handful of distinguished editors, translators, and agents on the Bulgarian side. We will also be hosting the Lebanese-Canadian writer Rawi Hage in a roundtable; he won the Dublin IMPAC Award for 2008 and it is a great honor for us to host him.

Our NES and Bulgarian workshop fellows for Sozopol are if anything more impressive than last year's, after an extraordinary leap in the number of applications on both sides; their CVs include deservedly well-published novels and short stories, Pushcart nominations and other prestigious awards, and considerable teaching experience.

This year we will also be sponsoring for the first time a follow-up day-long event in Sofia on June 9, in conjunction with the US Embassy, to engage Sofia's literary and publishing community in a public discussion of the importance of literary diplomacy and a set of readings by Sozopol's guests and fellows. We plan unusual press coverage.

During this year, we have continued to publish translated and original work from our Sozopol fellows in Bulgaria's VAGABOND magazine, and have also established a series of publications of books on the writing craft (filling a serious gap for teachers, working writers, and workshop leaders). It begins this month with the presentation of a translation of one of Josip Novakovich's works on the subject.

Over the next year, we will continue planning for a fiction translation prize from Bulgarian into English and for a one-time NES-Bulgarian poetry and translation conference for 2011.

Previous update:
In March 2008, the Endowment announced its newest project, based on a promising partnership with the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation in Sofia, Bulgaria. EKF assists and encourages contemporary Bulgarian writers, literary projects, and translations.The US Embassy in Sofia and the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation have joined efforts to host three literary events at the American Corner at the Sofia City Library on June 9, 2009. The information was announced by the Embassy's press center. Click here for more information.

In February 2009, Ms Kostova reports on the swift rise to prominence of the Sozopol Seminar. For this June's meetings, she reports she has been "eading nearly 60 applications for the Sozopol seminar--they are even better this year, if anything, demanding tough choices, and we have not only MORE applications (over 10%) but also five re-applications from the English-speaking comunity alone. These are good signals and hold out hopes for a step upwards in June."

Founded in 2006, EKF has attracted widespread interest; its Board includes some of Bulgaria’s foremost cultural, business, and academic leaders, among them the country’s representative to the European Union. With her husband Georgi Kostov and in cooperation with Ciela, one of Bulgaria's largest publishers, American novelist Kostova created EKF to support the literary renaissance currently taking place in Bulgaria.

Kostova’s first novel The Historian (Little, Brown, 2005) has been translated into more than forty languages. Set partly in Bulgaria, it has resonated with a wide public there. A Yale graduate who also holds an MFA in the writing of fiction, Ms. Kostova teaches in the University of Michigan’s summer writing program. This spring she was the Distinguished Guest Lecturer at the University of North Carolina in Wilmington.

The work of EKF has attracted actual and potential partners: the Open Society Foundation, the Bulgarian Fulbright Commission, the American University of Bulgaria, the Iowa International Writers’ Program, the American Embassy in Sofia, the Bulgarian Embassy in Washington, the Dalkey Archive Press, and the new Bulgarian University. Scores of Bulgarian writers, editors, translators, publishers, book journalists, and educators have welcomed this new star on their horizon.

“Americans do not realize that Bulgaria has a vigorous literary tradition,” Kostova notes. “Still, after forty years behind the Iron Curtain and fifteen subsequent years of economic stagnation, there is little formal support there for arts and letters. The kind of help we routinely give writers in the U.S. is missing—there are few awards, almost no literary conferences or retreats, and very little teaching of creative writing in the universities. There is a vital need to increase resources for writers and to build literary community."

EKF first learned about the Roth Endowment because of our work in translation-EKF is committed to promoting fine translations from English into Bulgarian and, in time, to bringing Bulgarian literature into English. The Bulgarian market has been flooded by commercial Western fiction, which fails to provide the country with the best in foreign literature and drives out Bulgarian writing.

With a major gift from EKF, the Roth Endowment helped EKF award its first annual translation prize for a work translated from English into Bulgarian. During the Sofia Book Fair of December 2007, the eminent Bulgarian translator Lyubomir Nikolov was honored with for his translation of Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner. (15.05.08)

Grantee Heidi W. Durrow will be publishing her first novel, The Girl Who Fell From the Sky, partly set in Denmark. Click here for more information. On reading an advanced copy, Barbara Kingsolver wrote: "Out of the clear blue, here is a breathless telling of a tale we've never heard before.  Haunting and lovely, pitch-perfect, this book could not be more timely."

2009’s grantee, painter Mille Guldbeck, spent the summer in Denmark, on her own funds; her work there was part of a group show with prominent contemporary Danish artists. It will travel to her home university, Bowling Green, then elsewhere in the US in 2007-2008, and then to the Herter Gallery at the University of Massachusetts. With the Endowment’s help, she spent five months on the remote island of Mon, painting its desolate landscapes.

We already miss the collaboration of our long-time colleague at the American Scandinavian Foundation, Ellen McKay; she has moved over to IIE to a broader set of responsibilities. She will remain part of our extended family. (15.05.08)

Announcement for a photographic exhibition being put on by Carrie Schneider, one of this year's Roth-Thomson grantees in Finland. "Elaborate Flirtations" was on display at the Galleria FAF in Helsinki.

Ms. Schneider is working on her MFA in Photography at the Art Institute of Chicago and spent the year in Finland at the Academy of Fine Arts, Department of Time and Space Arts, working on an overarching project entitled "Hot versus Cold: Embodying the Finnish Landscape." With the assistance of Terhi Topi at the Helsinki Fulbright Commission, we awarded two grants in 2006, as the Commission moved to a post-arrival approach: Kjerstin Moody looked at 20th century modernist Finnish poetry, and Michael Jakab created a series of “micromovies” on contemporary Finnish culture.  (03.07.08)

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This photo of Kjerstin Moody was taken at Turku-Åbo Castle. A Ph.D. candidate in Scandinavian Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Moody is focusing on 20th century Scandinavian literature, in particular women’s poetry written in Finland and Sweden between the First and Second World Wars. Her 2005-2006 Fulbright year in the Department of Finnish Literature at the University of Helsinki provided her a chance to focus on Finnish literary history. She was honored by the Roth Endowment’s support of her work and used a portion of the award to purchase materials for her studies and the remainder to return to Finland.

 

For almost 20 years, the Endowment has been helping fund the Prix Coindreau in Paris, an annual award for the best translation from American literature. Ot osd designed to help upgrade the quality of translation in general. The award honors the memory of the great French translator of the great American novels of the period 1925-60, including names like Faulkner, Hemingway, Dos Passos, Capote et al. The Prix Coindreau has honored a long list of translations of writers like (selected, in chronological order): William Carlos Williams, Djuna Barnes, Peter Mathiessen, Stanley Elkins, William Goyen, Cormac McCarthy, Emily Dickenson, Annie Dillard, James McPherson, Edith Wharton, Michael Cunningham, and John Barth. The Endowment began its help in 1989. The 2007 award went to Agnes Desarthe for Cynthia Ozick's novel The Puttermesser Papers. Earmarked funds are needed. We record the death this year of Didier Coupaye, longtime mainstay of the Coindreau Committee, a sad addition to the loss several years ago of the stalwart Michel Gresset, who died some years ago (see photo, under Prix Coindreau).

Secretary Marie-Claude Peugeot writes to inform us of this year's award on September 24. The Committee in Paris voted to award this year's Prix to France-Camus Pichon, for her translation of a collection of stories and essays by Charles d'Ambrosio - The Dead Fish Museum and Orphans. Since Mme Pichon lives in Orléans, the award ceremony will take place in Orléans, at Catherine Martuin-Zay's bookshop Les Temps Modernes, in late November. (05.11.08)

In September 2007, the Endowment's chairman attended the meetings of the American Studies Association of Italy in Macerata in the western Apennines. He found keen enthusiasm among the new breed of young Italian historians of the U.S. for help in guiding their students towards American libraries and archival research. (15.05.08)

This year's Lois Roth award by the American Institute of Iranian Studies went to Professor Mohammad Ghanoonparvar of the University of Texas at Austin. The award was presented by Dr. Franklin Lewis of the University of Chicago at the annual meetings of the Middle East Studies Association.

While the award was made for his translation of the work of Farhad Meskoub, he has been a stalwart translator for many years of the modern Persian writers--Sadeq Chubak, Sadeq Hedayat, Moniru Ravanipur, Simin Daneshvar, and othes. One can see his photo and other details on the University of Texas website. Dr. Lewis notes: "I think we have struck a good balance between modern and pre-modern works and should probably look next year at the classical texts."

This year’s American Institute of Iranian Studies prize will be awarded in Toronto. It will go to the two translators of Simin Behbehani's Cup of Sins, Kaveh Safa and Farzaneh Milani. This is a remarkable work of contemporary poetry, we are informed by AIIS Chair Franklin Lewis of the University of Chicago. The Endowment provides a prize of $1500.

Details about the year before year's award to Jawad Mojadeddi, for his translation of the first of Rumi's six-volume Masnavi, reach us. Because Rumi is a best-seller in the U.S., the AIIS is pleased that a serious translation of the entire six-volume opus of Rumi has begun. Dr. Lewis believes the Roth-AIIS award will encourage Dr. Mojadeddi to carry through to the end of this monumental project.

Meanwhile, critics are praising the achievement of Endowment laureate Dick Davis for his splendid translation of the complete Shahnameh of Ferdowsi, which the distinguished critic Michael Dirda of the Washington Post and the New York Review of Books called “one of 2006's great works of fiction.” (13.06.08)

In 2006, the Endowment's long discussion about a program with New Zealand to honor our late board colleague Robin Winks and his wife Avril. Under new director Mele Wendt of the Fulbright Commssion in Wellington, we launched the program in the Fall of 2006.

Full details on awardees and photographs from 60th Anniversary of Fulbright in New Zealand....click here

The Fulbright Commission, under new director Sonja Mikletun, stabilized its post-arrival research approach and submitted two outstanding candidates.  Amelia Bidwell, Smith College 2003, worked on local community and politics in medieval Scandinavia, as part of the Transformation Project at the Centre for Viking and Medieval Studies at the University of Oslo; and Aline Bersagel looked at Norwegian efforts to enlist NGOs in public and cultural diplomacy.  2006’s returned grantee, Robert Strand, from his base at the business school at the University of Minnesota, writes: “In Norway, as a Fulbright researching business ethics and corporate responsibility, I was helped by the Roth Endowment to regionalize my research through travel.  In companies like Nokia in Finland and Novo Nordisk in Denmark, I explored different approaches to responsibility, critical to the breadth of the research paper I have submitted for publication.”  (03.07.08)

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Annie Bersagel is a 2006-2007 Fulbright grantee, enrolled in coursework in the master of peace and conflict studies graduate program at the University of Oslo in Oslo, Norway. Her current research project is a comparison of Norweigan and US approaches to international mediation involving non-state actors, with a focus on the Middle East peace process in the early 1990's. In addition to her studies, Annie trains with for a local track and field club, IK Tjalve, which also affords her the opportunity to brush up on her Norwegian. A graduate of Wake Forest University, Annie was named the 2006 NCAA Woman of the Year. She intends to continue studying in Oslo during the next academic year, in order to obtain the master of peace and conflict studies degree in 2008.

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Robert Strand, presently with Boston Scientific (medical devices) in Minneapolis and an adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota, Fulbright scholar in Norway 2005-2006, and Roth grantee, reports that his paper on “Corporate Responsibility in Scandinavian Supply Chains” has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Business Ethics.

In his paper, Strand examines four of the largest Scandinavian multinationals—IKEA, Nokia, Novo Nordisk, and StatoilHydro—and finds that each of these companies has implemented responsible supply chain practices, allowing them to maintain a “cooperative advantage” in their ability to form successful, long-term partnerships with their suppliers in developing countries and with the communities of their suppliers. These practices involve engaging their suppliers as key stakeholders and partners and managing their relationships with them based on honesty and trust.

IKEA, for example, with home-furnishing stores in 29 countries and annual revenues of $29 billion, has established supply chains in a number of low-cost regions of the world in order to be able to provide its well-designed products at affordable prices. To meet the considerable societal and environmental challenges found in the nations of its supply chain partners, it has established linkages with UNICEF, Save the Children, and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). These linkages allow IKEA to deal responsibly with such issues as child labor and environmental impact.

Building on his enthusiasm for this area of research, Strand is now thinking of pursuing a PhD in Scandinavia, possibly at the Copenhagen Business School in Denmark.

The National Peace Foundation’s chair Dr. Sarah Harder writes from Moscow, in the company of her counterpart, Olga Bessolova, about our small grant-in-aid: “We have moved to a new initiative in the North Urals, where since 2001 civic and professional leaders from four cities have worked with NPF to develop treatment systems for victims of the heroin flowing in from Afghanistan. Early in 2007, returnees to Russia from NPF Open World visits to the US set up their own NGO; it is the first in the region to address the taboo subject of addiction. This project has helped produce one of Russia’s early community-based treatment initiatives. In Krasnoturinsk, the Marinka Salvation Center is turning an abandoned resort complex into an addiction facility, expanding regional treatment capabilities and providing public information on heroin and HIV, both serious threats to those under 30 and to society in general. Unique in Mr. Putin’s Russia, it will be interesting to watch developments in the new Medvedev era. Meanwhile, the new center could not have happened without Roth Endowment help.” (16.05.08)

Board member and swedish alumnus Bill Rivera is working with alumni and board member Sky Arndt-Briggs is managing our Scandinavian relations, on the site of the UMass Program in Germanic and Scandinavian Languages and Literature. Our oldest program continues with the Swedish Fulbright Commission, but the retirement of our friend of two decades, Fulbright ex-director Jeanette Lindstrom, has affected our plans to some extent. While last year's grantees Kjersti Knox and Garrtt Bucks have returned to the US, in Knox' case after studying indigenous Sami medicine and in Bucks' case after his study of globalization and poverty, we are puzzled not to have received nominations this Fall for the post-arrival program which has worked so well this far. We are attempting to discuss this with the new executive director, but our communications have fallen short so far. In all this program year is over and we shall have to bank on re-starting in the Fall of 2008. (05.05.08)

When former USIA great "Mim" Johnston decided to honor her late husband Col. Richar R. Hallock (USA retired) after his death, she noted that he had been enchanted dby his tour in Turkey, in Izmir. Entering into discussions with Dr. Robert Gosende, now a board member, we explored what the Endowment might do in Turkey. Gosende reported the success, beginning five years ago, in persuading the Turkish government and the Fulbright Commission in Ankara to build a jont-degree program between all the Turkish universities and the 64 branches of the State University of New York, for which he is Vice-President for International Affairs.

When these discussions began, the number of Turkish students on SUNY campuses had already risen from zero to over 700; today it numbers above 1500. The idea was to begin adding a graduate level to this extraordinary effort, first to develop Turkish Studies in the SUNY system, then to begin to work with the Turkish uniersities to enhance their capacity to provide serious teachimg about the U.S.

When SUNY opened its new Levin Center for International Affairs in New York, honoring a victim of 9/11, Gosende and the Center director Garrick Utley decided that the Levin Center should be involved. The first senior lecturer in Turkish poplitics is Dr. Umit Cizre of Bulkint University in Ankara; she is based at SUNY Binghamton. In April, Dr. Cizre was the lecturer at the launching of this program, which is an unusual example of the cooperation of five or six different bodies in Turkey and the U.S. We are delighted to play a small role in this giant project and are watching this program carefully and considering its growth inside the SUNY system. (22.05.08)

The first Endowment grantee to the SUNY system, Dr. Umit Cizre, spent the Spring semester 2008 teaching and exploring the possibilitiers for the development of Turkish Studies in the 64-campus SUNY system, which already has over 1500 Turkish students working on a four-year alternating-year program which will result in a double degree from their SUNY campus and home university in Turkey.

Dr. Cizre was based at the campus in Binghamton, home of the famous Braudel Center, Surveying the situation, she decided to put her Endowment grant into the develoipment of the already-impressive Turkish Studies collection in the university library. Under the leadership of head Librarian John Meador and his colleagues, plans are under way to make the library especially hospitable for Turkish students there. Dr. Meador, in his approach to building inter-library connections by the use of electronic media, is optimistic that the SUNY collection can link to the participating Turkish university libraries.

Dr. Cizre, working with the energetic Katherine Krebs, director of international programs on the SUNY campus, and associate provost and linguist Stephen Straight, was able to make her presence felt throughout the system's 64 campuses. In New York City, Dr. Cizre inaugurated her visit with a lecture o.n contemporary Turkish politics at SUNY's new Levin Center, headed by newscaster great Garrick Utley. On that occasion, Endowment board-member Robert Gosende announcded the long-range plans for the program, which has implications for a companion approach to American Studies in Turkey in due time. The Center, named the late head of the New York Port Authority, who died in the 9/11 disaster, will focus on international studies.

Dr. Cizre will follow her semester in Binghamton in the Fall by beginning a year at Princeton University, where she was a graduate student in politics. She will thus remain a central participant in the SUNY plans and the Endowment's involvement.

Edwin Cranston, winner of 2007's Lois Roth Award, receiving the certificate from MLA Vice-President Gerald Graff.

The Modern Language Association of America Roth Award for Literary Translation (2007) has been given to Edwin A. Cranston for A Waka Anthology, Volume Two: Grasses of Remembrance (Stanford University Press, 2006).

Part of a monumental multi-volume anthology of anthologies, this second volume is devoted to Japanese court poetry from the mid ninth century to the late eleventh century (following the demarcations of the pioneering work of Brower and Miner, Japanese Court Poetry, 1961). Its collection of over 2,600 poems represents the first full flowering of Japanese court poetry. Cranston provides a romanized version of each piece, with a parallel translation into English.

While Grasses of Remembrance is preeminently a triumph of scholarship across many years, it is also a labor of love by a man who is himself a poet. Its appeal for the general reader will be the extraordinary accessibility of the translations, their infinitely fine attention to details of daily life and to mood, the ease with which they convey a remarkable range of perceptions and emotions.

Lovers of The Tale of Genji will especially enjoy Cranston’s translations of all the poems from that great prose work—a virtually complete commentary on Murasaki’s seminal novel.

A clue to the liveliness and beauty of Cranston’s work may be found in his ideas about the art of translation. Some of these are summarized in this quotation from the Introduction to Grasses of Remembrance (reprinted here with the author’s permission):

In the course of rendering thousands of poems into English over many years, I have tended to let them rewrite themselves in ways that sometimes are no doubt not strictly excusable on the grounds given above. For better or worse, I am not a purist— not a perfectionist—despite my tedious ways and long delays. These poems live in their rhythms, in their need to find expression in another tongue, and in the pleasure their words convey to me—and, I hope, to you. Those are my loyalties. I have also allowed myself to write commentaries to suit my fancy as well as to suit the poems. If I have occasionally “let my hair down” (crinitus Iopas, indeed!), it has been because I need to free the discourse on poetry from the deadening pall of pedantry and cant that ever and anon threatens to engulf it. Discourse on poetry is discourse on life. I fear I have not gone far enough, not written well enough, to provide you, dear reader, with the pleasure I feel. The dead hand of “this is not for your amusement,” that bequest of graduate study, is still too much upon me. The Old Man Who Does As He Pleases is not yet me—quite. But there are further volumes yet to come.

From this sense of what the poet/translator can do comes poetry (and commentary) like the following:

It is curious how in love with its own vanishing is the Romantic imagination. Mist over the mountains, wind along the desert’s dusty face, a name written on water—to be as evanescent as these is in a way to be, if not immortal, then one with the universe. The motivation behind poem no. 838, to be sure, is a bit more situational. The gentleman is fishing for a little sympathy, an assurance that what he proposes will not come to pass. The lady, however, sees through the mist without difficulty. In the best tradition of the feminine reply, she uses the man’s images and tropes against him.

838
Dai Shirazu Harugasumi		Should I fade away
Hakanaku tachite		Like the wispy mists of spring,
Wakaru to mo		Rising to depart,
Kaze yori hoka ni		Who but the wind would afterward
Tare ka toubeki		Come to ask how I fare?

 

839 Ise. Reply:
Me ni mienu		Trusting to the wind
Kaze ni kokoro o		That the eye can never see,
Taguetsutsu		I might send my heart,
Yaraba kasumi no		And be certain that the mists
Wakare koso seme		Would part—yes, sure of them.

 

  -R.C. Bemis  

Second Dyankov Prizes Awarded
At the annual Book Fair in Sofia, translators Iglika Vassileva (for John Banville's The Sea) and Yordan Kostourkov (for Cynthia Ozick's The Messiah of Stockholm) were awarded the second round of Dyankov Prizes, foiunded in 2007 by the Kostova Foundation and supported by the Lois Roth Endowment. Owing to the high quality of the nominees this year, the jury awarded two prizes of $2000 each to these two highly respected writers. The Dyankov Prize has already become one of the literary events of the year in Bulgaria, honoring the year’s best translation from English into Bulgarian. It is named for Krustan Dyankov (1933-99), renowned translator of American literature, who brought into Bulgarian life works by Faulkner, Steinbeck, Caldwell, Updike and Cheever. Iglika Vassileva, as a literary translator, is best known for her translations of Virginia Wool and for James Joyce’s Ulysses. Yordan Kosturkov is a writer of fiction, university Professor, and translator of English and American literature.

The first award by the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation of the Dyankov Prize, named for the great Bulgarian translator Krustan Dyankov, went to Lyubomir Nikolov for his translation of Khaled Hosseini’s novel The Kite Runner, published in Bulgarian by Obsidian Publisher.

In his acceptance speech in December 2007, Nikolov urged support for young Bulgarian translators. He thanked Krustan Dyankov and Valery Petrov, his university mentors, as well as his publisher.

Lyubomir Nikolov, writer and literary translator, was born in 1950 in Kazanluk. He studied engineering for two years in Tula (former USSR), then graduated in journalism from Sofia University in 1977. Since then he has worked for Channel 1 of Bulgarian NTV, the Central Council of Bulgarian Trade Unions, and various newspapers and magazines.

Since 1988, Nikolov has translated more than 70 books from English by authors like J.R.R. Tolkien, Hemingway, Stephen King, John Grisham, Frank Herbert, John Updike, and Clifford Simak. His translation of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings received the Award of the Union of Bulgarian Translators in1991. His five novels of science fiction include: The Generation Tribunal, 1978; The Mole, 1981; A Worm Under the Autumn Wind, 1986 (EUROCON ’87 Award); Along the Wall, 1989 (SOCCON ‘89 Award); and The Tenth Righteous Man, 1999 (Readers’ Award for best SF novel, 1990-2000).

The Dyankov Award of the EKF will be given annually for outstanding translation of a work of fiction from English to Bulgarian.

Competing titles that received at least one nomination and met the Award competition criteria include Gregory Norminton’s The Ship of Fools; Daniel Silva's Prince of Fire; Christopher Buxton’s Far from the Danube; Julian Barnes’ Arthur & George, Marina Lewycka’s A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian; Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad; Martin Amis’ House of Meetings; Michael Cunningham’s Specimen Days; and Paul Auster’s Oracle Night.

While this year's award will go to a work of contemporary poetry, last year's American Institute of Iranian Studies prize went to Jawad Mojaddedi for The Masnavi, Book One, by Jalal al-Din Rumi (Oxford University Press, 2004). The award's citation, as read at the AIIS/ISIS conference in London last spring reads: "Jalal al-Din Rumi is a best-selling poet in the U.S., through translations that present polished excerpts of individual parts of his great work, one of the most widely read poems in the Muslim world. However, these selections typically excerpt stories from the fabric of the work and fail to show the lineaments that thread one story to the next.

Today we are at a moment when a translation of the entire masterpiece, expressed in a contemporary, accessible language for a wider readership, is desirable. This is a daunting task, requiring a commitment of heroic patience and intellectual persistence. Jawid Mojaddedi has taken that step, with theisfirst volume of his projected complete verse translation. We honor him as well for his timely contribution to English letters. There are translations that introduce new voices to us, and others that make the voices we had thought familiar seem new. New generations need new translations of the classics, and here we have the voice of Rumi in the idiom of today; it can take its place alongside modern translations of Ferdowsi, Dante, Homer, and others. Making Rumi available to us in his complexity and his discursive, conversational persona is a great and lasting contribution. We would be pleased if this award could confirm Professor Mojaddedi in the commitment to translate the remaining five books of this great mystical-didactic poem." (13.06.08)

The Endowment's chair was able to attend this year's Prix Coindreau ceremony. The prize was awarded at the bustling bookship of Catherine Martin-Zay, Les Temps Modernes, in Orléans. It went to France Camus-Pichon for her admirable translations of two examples of the work of Charles D'Ambrosio, The Dead Fish Museum and Orphans. D'Ambrosio is one of a group of young American writers which the publishing firm Albin-Michel has been putting before French, as often in the past a trifle ahead of the US market. Among those attending was Robert Greffard, who has spearheaded this effort at Albin Michel. One bit of sad news: Christian Bourgois, another major publisher of young American writers, died this year. A new generation, successors to stalwarts like Michel Gresset and Dider Coupaye, is headed by Jean-Pierre Richard and includes laureates like Anne Damour, Anne Wicke, Bernard Hooepfner, Michel Lederer, as well as Mme. Martin-Zay and the Comité's veteran secretary Marie-Claude Peugeot. One of the founders, Marc Chénetier, was in attendance: he has retired and lives nearby in the countryside near Chenonceau.

Endowment chair Arndt offered brief remarks, commending the Comité on surviving through 25 lean years and on turning up new US talent again; he pledged the onoing support of the Endowment. Countering unspoken assumptions that all Americans are wealthy, he described the Endowment's populist history, stressing the ongoing support of a hundred or more faithful small donors, plus 3-4 occasional larger contributions. He reminded the audience that Lois Roth was also a translator and that he himself had recently completed a translation of Pierre Magnan's Laure: A Novel of Provence, currently seeking a US publisher. (12.24.08)

The 2007 award went to Agnès Desarthe, writer and outstanding translator. For the publishing house L'Olivier, Mme Desarthe rendered into French Cynthia Ozick's novel The Puttermesser Papers.

The death this year of Didier Coupaye, longtime mainstay of the Coindreau Committee, has not helped. It adds sadly to the loss of the stalwart Michel Gresset some years ago. Coupaye and Gresset, key members of the first generation of the prize’s champions, will be hard to replace.

PRIX COINDREAU: LAUREATES 1928-2007

*1982 – William Carlos Williams, Paterson (Yves Di Manno)
*1983 – Djuna Barnes, Ryder (Jean-Pierre Richard)
*1984 – Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard (Suzanne Hétillard)
*1985 – Stanley Elkins, The Franchiser (Jean-Pierre Carasso)
1986 – Joseph Heller, Catch 22, and John Fante, Bandini (Brice
Matthieussent)
*1987 – William Goyen, Had I a Hundred Mouths (Patrice Repusseau)
*1988 – Willam Spackman, A Presence With Secrets (Bernard Turle)
1989 – Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian (François Hirsch)
1990 – Emily Dickinson, Selected Poems (Claire Malroux)
1991 – Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinkers Creek (Pierre Gault)
1992 – James McPherson, The Battle Cry of Freedom (Béatrice Vierne)
1993 – Joseph Brodkey, Angel (Michel Lederer) 1994 – Ernest Gaines, A Long Day in November and Other Stories
Harold Brodkey, Angel (Michelle Herpe-Voslinsky)
1995 – William Bronk, ed.,The World, The Worldless (Paol Keineg)
1996 – Edith Wharton, A Backward Glance (Jean Pavans)
1997 – Gilbert Sorrentino, Red the Fiend (Bernard Hoepffner)
1998 – Lewis Nordan, Welcome to the Arrow-Catcher Fair (Michèle Albaret-Maatsch)
1999 – Chris Offutt, The Same River Twice (Anne Wicke)
2000 – Michael Cunningham, The Hours(Anne Damour)
2991 - Stephen Millhauser, Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer (Francçoise Cartano)
2002 – Annie Dillard, For the Time Being (Sabine Porte)
2003 – Mark Z. Danielewsi, House of Leaves
John Barth, The Sotweed Factor (Claro)
2004 – Daniel Mason, The Piano Tuner (Marie-Claire Pasquier)
2005 – Nicholson Baker, A Box of Matches and The Size of Thoughts, Essays and Other Lumber (Antoine Caze)
2006 – Monique Truong, The Book of Sal (Marc Amfreville)
2007 – Cynthia Ozick, The Puttermesser Papers (Agnès Desarthe)

Asterisk (*) denotes before help by Endowment made available.

The Jeanne Varney Pleasants Award of the French Department, Columbia University, is given annually to the graduate student who best exemplified the teaching standards of the remarkable phonetician and pedagogue Dr. Pleasants.We learn from Pascale Hubert-Leibler, director of undergraduate teaching in Columbia University's French Department, about the progress of laureates of the Jeanne Varney Pleasants Award for Teaching.

Last year's winner, Cathy Leung, has a four-year teaching assignment at Barnard this year. Geoffrey McAdam has been teaching in the Columbia College Department of French and handling a Humanities section in the Core Curriculum for two years now. Matthew Bridge will join him in the College Department this year for a two-year assignment, also handling a Humanities section--a high honor at Columbia. Thjs year McAdam will be teachihng an upperclass course called Speed and modernity as well. Matthew Udkovich is finishing his disseration and will begin teaching this Fall at the Yeshiva University in New York. Monika Keister (Lecoeur) will be researching her doctoral thesis in France this year. And Jason Earle will be teaching literature and advanced writing in the general French program.

The progress through their profession of the Pleasants alumni is impressive. They are scattered around the country and abroad, each moving ahead in the professionalism for which we honored them in their student days. The Columbia Department has cooperated in an exemplary manner. We look forward to helping this grow over time and seek further contributions to its supporting sub-fund. (17.05.08)

A triumphant return to activity was noted on June 5, 2008 when, in a splendid ceremony with all top Educational-Cultural Bureau leaders on stage, the first Lois Roth Award in some time was given to Debbie Jones, for her outstanding work in Kazakhistan.

In 2006 or 2007, no candidates for the Roth Award were judged adequate for this prestigious prize, dedicated to excellence in the overseas practice of cultural diplomacy. The 2007 call for nominations, by the Bureau of Cultural and Educational Affairs to all offices and field posts, produced a panel names and the Award, plus an honorable mention citation was given on June 5, 2008. Both honorees received signed copies of the Chair's history of US cultural diplomacy (The First Resort of Kings) as part of their award.

The Roth prize of $1500 remains unique as a privately-based recognition of excellence in the pursuit of State's educational and cultural diplomacy. The sub-fund supporting the Roth award now stands well over $24,000, thanks in part to a final grant from the Delavan Foundation. We urge extra support for this purpose, especially in view of the new Ilchman-Richardson award.

As we enter the era when these mid-level officers, laureates from the last decades, alumnae are finishing up their careers or seeking new ones. Marjorie Ransom is traveling around the world, collecting tribal jewelry for her collection and for other musems, for example. Nan Bell has just retired from her leadership position in the International Visitor Program. Kiki Munshee has returned from her embedment experience in Iraq and is speaking out about the war. We hope alumnae will consider it a privilege to stay in touch and help us grow. (13.06.08)

In an impressive ceremony on June 5, 2008, a new Endowment award was created for the Department of State. The Ilchman-Richardson Award named for the late Alice S. Ilchman and John Richardson, former directors of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA), was given for the first time to Robert Persiko, long-time director of ECA’s youth and teenage programs.

An earlier Ilchman award without stipend had been bestowed five years before by Assistant Secretary Patricia Harrison on David Whitten, then-Executive Director of the Bureau. Mr. Persiko's award was received by his deputy in the office from which he recently retired, since he is spending his first year of retirement in Germany.

At the same ceremony, after a two-year lapse, the Lois Roth Award for Excellence in Cultural Diplomacy was given to foreign service officer Deborah Jones, for her outstanding work in Kazakhistan. The two awards complement each other, one going to foreign service officers, the other to domestic civil servants. The State Department selection committee further designated Victoria Sloan for Honorable Mention. Both laureates were given signed copies of Richard Arndt's book The First Resort of Kings, on US cultural diplomacy in the 20th century.

The impressive ceremony, attrended by 200 staffers of ECA, took place in the auditorium below the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs on 4th Street SW. Assistant Secretary Goli Amerii presided over the occasion and reminded the audience that she had been a student in Tehran’s Iranzamin School at the time when Lois Roth was managing the giant Iran America Society (IAS) a few blocks north. Crediting Iranzamin School for all that she is today, she pointed out that the IAS in the Roth years was "the place in Tehran where it was happening." With Ms. Ameri was Senior Depity Assistant Secretary C. Miller Crouch and Sheldon Yuspeh, Executive Director of the Bureau, and other officials of ECA.

We are looking forward to engaging alumni, beginning with Whitten and Persiko, in our activities. (15.08.08)

My Fulbright research here in Australia is focused on contemporary dance and arts curation, and the additional Roth funds enabled me to attend a unique arts festival in Tasmania called Ten Days on the Island. The festival brings the work of a wide variety of internationally-respected artists to communities all across Tasmania. During my visit, for example, I went to the town of Bridport (population: 500, with no stop lights!), to see an Italian music ensemble play live accompaniment to old documentary films from the Aeolian Islands. The fact that these performances were being presented in such remote communities was extraordinary. I've never experienced anything else like it.
Abi Sebaly

(12.05.09)

At the National Gallery's Center for Study in the Visual Arts, this year’s Millon Fellow will be Dr. Luigi Sperti, architectural historian at the University of Venice, who will be in residence in September and October of 2008. He will continue his work on architectural decoration and the classical tradition in early Renaissance Venice.

Dean Elizabeth Cropper advises us that our annual contribution last year helped Prof. Cammy Brothers, University of Virginia architectural historian, lately in residence at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington. She worked in the Italian Architectural Drawings and Photographic Collection, founded by Henry Millon, on Giuliano da Sangallo. The Collection now holds nearly 50,000 photographs and 350 manuscripts on pre-1900 Italian architecture, with a filing system that accesses other world repositories. Earmarked gifts are needed to support and expand this project.

Dr. Brothers, in her final report on her project “Drawing from Memory,” writes of Giuliano da Sangallo and Rome’s ruins. She writes: "Contemporary architecture prizes originality. In fifteenth century Italy, however, an architect’s reputation was made in part on the basis of how much he had been able to steal or borrow from the past. A design was not spontaneously generated but took form in negotiation with precedent.The precedents that carried the greatest weight in Renaissance Italy were overwhelmingly Roman. But ancient Rome was baffling to the uninitiated. In the mid-sixteenth century, printed books by Serlio, Palladio and Vignola established a canon of classical monuments In the Codex Barberini and the Taccuino Senese (c. 1465–1516), Sangallo made the first thorough attempt to document the monuments of Rome. His drawings represent a moment of intersection between a poetic and an analytic engagement with Rome.

"Over the course of a two-month fellowship at CASVA, my research focused on Giuliano’s work as a draftsman, architect, and antiquarian in relation to his contemporaries. The collection of photographs of architectural drawings at the National Gallery of Art Library, unique in North America and comparable only to that of the Hertziana library in Rome, made it possible for me to make substantial progress. Given that fifteenth- and sixteenth-century drawings and sketchbooks are scattered in collections throughout Europe and the world, the study of photographs provides an essential means of understanding and analyzing essential connections between works.
"My research this summer focused in particular on the work of a number of drawings and books of drawings by anonymous or lesser known draftsmen, which are rarely if ever available in published form.

"Sangallo’s drawings of Rome invite a consideration of many issues central to Renaissance architectural culture: the architect’s relation to the past, and the link between the study of ancient monuments and formulation of new designs; conventions of representation in architecture and their relation to pictorial practices; and the diverse functions of drawing. They also suggest a more inclusive view of classicism, in their emphasis on the unstable and richly varied qualities of Roman architecture. Finally, the drawings illuminate the link between perception, representation, and design." ( 12.06.08)

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Our 2005 Millon grantee was the Venetian Dr. Paola Modesti, who studied the uses, functions and publics of the churches of Venice, from the city's origins until the Counter-Reformation. (12.06.08)

May 21-25 will mark the first of the Seozopol seminars. The Elizabeth Kostova Foundation, with our help, is mounting the first writers seminar in Bulagria's history. This pilot program is deigned to be the keystone of the EKF program: a four-day seminar on the writing of fiction, in historic Sozopol, on the Black Sea coast. The town is already a focal point for some EKF activities--Ms. Kostova has been named an Honorary Citizen. The Seminar will bring together five Bulgarian writers and five native-English writer-students from around the world; it will provide intensive workshops and seminars with the British novelist Kate Mosse, award-winning Bulgarian novelists Theodora Dimova and Emil Andreev, and Ms. Kostova herself. Competition for admission to the seminar was keen, with nine international applications for each available place. The Endowment will help support eight of the participants. (17.05.08)