The Belgian translation prize ‘Prix Scam de la Traduction littéraire’ has been awarded to Marie Hooghe for her translations from Dutch to French.

Die Jury des Else Otten Übersetzerpreises hat beschlossen, den Preis 2014 zwei Übersetzern zu verleihen: Bettina Bach für ihre Übersetzung von Hotel Linda von Arjan Visser, im Februar 2014 unter dem Titel Der blaue Vogel kehrt zurück erschienen bei Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag in München, und Rainer Kersten für seine Übersetzung von De laatkomer von Dimitri Verhulst, im April 2014 erschienen als Der Bibliothekar, der lieber dement war als zu Hause bei seiner Frau bei Luchterhand Verlag in München.

The P.C. Hooft Prize, one of the most prestigious prizes for literature in the Netherlands is awarded to poet Anneke Brassinga (1948), whose work has been supported by by the Dutch Foundation for Literature and has been translated in more than ten languages including German and French. The annual award is alternately given for prose (fiction), essays (non-fiction) and poetry and will be presented to Brassinga on Thursday May 21th 2015 for her body of poetry.

On the 4th of December The Independent published an overview of the best debuts of 2014. Bonita Avenue by Peter Buwalda was one of the novels on Eimear McBride’s list: “If I had to choose one first novel, it would be the addictive bedlam of Bonita Avenue by Dutch novelist Peter Buwalda (Pushkin, £12.99).”

Joost de Wit has passed away at the age of seventy-five in his home village of Muntendam. De Wit (1938-2014) was director of the Foundation for the Promotion of the Translation of Dutch Literary Works, the forerunner of the Foundation for the Production and Translation of Dutch literature (NLPVF).

This morning at the Frankfurt Book Fair Marente de Moor was announced the winner of the European Union Prize for Literature 2014 for her second novel The Dutch Maiden (De Nederlandse maagd), published by Querido.

The two most important Dutch prizes for children’s and young adult literature, the Golden Slate Pencil and the Golden Paintbrush have gone to one and the same book, for the first time since 1985: The Mystery of Life – and the Stinky Socks of Jos Grootjes from Driel, published by Gottmer. Author Jan Paul Schutten and illustrator Floor Rieder introduce earth’s origins, the universe and the story of evolution in ways that are witty and factual, technical and anecdotal.

Poet Gerrit Kouwenaar died on 4 September 2014 in his hometown of Amsterdam. He was 91 years old. Kouwenaar was one of the most important Dutch poets and a member of the Vijftigers, a group of 1950s experimental Dutch poets, who changed Dutch poetry forever.

The Jenny Smelik-IBBY prize 2014 goes to author Hans Hagen and illustrator Philip Hopman for their youth novel Het hanengevecht (The Cockfight), published by Querido. This title was also selected for the 10 Children’s Books From Holland brochure (spring 2013) from the Dutch Foundation for Literature. Previous work by Hans Hagen has been translated into fourteen languages, including German, English, French, Spanish, Turkish, Chinese and Papiamento.

The renowned Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk is the Grand Prix winner of the 2014 Helena Vaz da Silva European Award for Raising Public Awareness on Cultural Heritage. This Award acknowledges exceptional contributions to the communication on cultural heritage and European ideals. The Jury also gave a Special Award to the Portuguese Art Historian José-Augusto França and a Special Mention to Pieter Steinz.

Flemish author Bart Moeyaert has been appointed artistic director of the programme to be presented by Flanders and the Netherlands as guests of honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2016.

The shortlist for the European Literature Prize 2014 has just been announced at a festive gathering in Amsterdam. The jury selected five titles from a longlist of twenty translated novels. The European Literature Prize is unusual in recognizing both the author and the translator of the winning book. The prize will be presented on Sunday 7 September, during Manuscripta, in Utrecht.

The prestigious Libris Literature Prize 2014 has been awarded to Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer for his novel La Superba (De Arbeiderspers). The jury described it as “an important novel with a powerful universal message which deserves many new readers outside our own language”.

Words without Borders dedicates a special issue of its webmagazine to New Dutch and Flemish Writing, under the title ‘Taboos’. This issue presents short prose exploring the intrusion of the forbidden, the illegal, the unspoken into people’s lives and homes. Editors Sanneke van Hassel (writer) and Victor Schiferli (Dutch Foundation for Literature) selected work from fourteen authors, most of whom grew up in the prosperous years that the Netherlands enjoyed from the mid-1970s until the 2008 financial crisis.

Der VvL-penning 2014 geht an die Übersetzerin Andrea Kluitmann und würdigt ihr großes Engagement für das Übersetzerfach. Andrea Kluitmann setzt sich schon seit vielen Jahren für die Literatur und ihre Übersetzung in den Niederlanden ein. Als Mitglied im Beratungsgremium des Nederlands Letterenfonds in Amsterdam sowie des Expertisecentrum Literair Vertalen in Utrecht, als Mitbegründerin der Website Vertaalverhaal.nl, und nicht zuletzt als Mitorganisatorin der ‘Übersetzerglücktournee’ (Vertalersgeluktournee).

The English translations of Tirza by Arnon Grunberg (tr. Sam Garrett for Open Letter Books) and The Forbidden Kingdom by Jan Jacob Slauerhoff (orig. Het verboden rijk, tr. Paul Vincent for Pushkin) have reached the finals of the 2014 Best Translated Book Awards in Fiction.

As of 1 April 2014, the Dutch Foundation for Literature’s board of directors will become a supervisory board. On that same date, Tiziano Perez will take up the post of managing director.

On Monday 17 March, the Dutch and Flemish Ministers of Culture, Jet Bussemaker and Joke Schauvliege, signed an agreement with Juergen Boos, director of the Frankfurter Buchmesse. That makes it official: the Netherlands and Flanders will jointly present themselves as guests of honour at the publishing industry’s most important international book fair in 2016. The Dutch Foundation for Literature and the Flemish Literature Fund will assume responsibility for the practical organization of the guest-of-honour programme. They will receive a significant part of the necessary funding from the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science and the Flemish Ministry of Culture, Youth, Sport and Media.

On Monday February 10, the Prix des Phares du Nord 2013 is given to Alain van Crugten for his translation into French of Sprakeloos by Tom Lanoye (La Langue de ma mère), published at the Parisian La Différence. The jury praised as well his French translation of the theatre play Mamma Medea.

The Vondel Translation Prize 2013 has been awarded to David Colmer for The Misfortunates (Portobello Books), his translation of De helaasheid der dingen by Dimitri Verhulst. The award ceremony took place at Europe House in London on Wednesday 12 February 2014.

Mister Orange is the 2014 Batchelder Award winner. Originally published in Dutch in 2011, the book was written by Truus Matti, translated by Laura Watkinson, and published by Enchanted Lion Books. Another translation from Dutch by Watkinson, The War Within These Walls (Eerdmans Books for Young Readers), written by Aline Sax and illustrated by Caryl Strzelecki, was selected as one of three Honour Books. The Batchelder Award is given to the most outstanding children’s book originally published in a language other than English in a country other than the United States, and subsequently translated into English for publication in the United States.

The longlist for the European Literature Prize 2014 has been announced: twenty novels translated into Dutch from no fewer than twelve different languages. A jury of Dutch and Flemish quality bookshops was asked to choose the best European novels in Dutch translation published in the past year. The prize is worth €10,000 to the author of the winning book and €5,000 to the translator.

Eighteen Dutch and Flemish novels have been selected for the longlist of the Libris Literature Prize 2014: the biggest Dutch literary award next to the AKO Literature Prize, modeled after the famous Booker Prize. The annual Libris prize for the best Dutch novel of the previous year consists of € 50.000.

Maria Barnas, F. van Dixhoorn, Micha Hamel, Miriam Van hee and Antoine de Kom have been nominated for the VSB Poetry Prize 2014, the annual prize for best Dutch work of poetry that will be awarded on January 29.