2009-2010 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature Award Ceremony

The Winners of the 2009-2010 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature

Jeffrey M. Angles
For his translation of Tada Chimako’s Forest of Eyes: Selected Poems of Tada Chimako, to be published by University of California Press in 2010.
Jeffrey Angles is an Associate Professor at Western Michigan University, where he teaches Japanese literature and translation studies. He earned his Ph.D. at Ohio State University in 2004, and his book Writing the Love of Boys: Desire Between Men in Early Twentieth-Century Japanese Literature will be published by University of Minnesota in 2010. His other translations include Killing Kanoko: Selected Poetry of Ito Hiromi (Action Press, 2009) and numerous short stories in various anthologies. Recently, he earned a National Endowment for the Arts grant to support his current translation project, the memoirs of the Japanese poet Takahashi Mutsuo.

Esperanza Ramirez-Christensen
For her translation of Shinkei’s Murmured ConversationsProfessor Ramirez-Christensen is the Director of Language Studies at the University of Michigan and specializes in classical Japanese literature, especially Heian and medieval poetry, narrative, and criticism. Her research interests include literary hermeneutics and Buddhist intellectual philosophy, as well as feminist readings of Heian women’s writing. Among her works are Heart’s Flower: The Life and Poetry of Shinkei (1994) and “Self-Representation and the Patriarchy in the Heian Female Memoirs” in The Father-Daughter Plot: Japanese Literary Women and the Law of the Father (2001).