Friedrich Ulfers Prize to Sara Bershtel

There's a prize with $5000 attached to it, the Friedrich Ulfers Prize, for "a leading publisher, writer, critic, translator, or scholar who has championed the advancement of German-language literature in the United States". And they've announced that the second winner is Metropolitan Books publisher Sara Bershtel. They do indeed have a long roster of German names in their catalogue: Tilman Allert, Götz Aly, Rotraut Susanne Berner, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Joachim Fest, Christoph Hein, Herta Müller. Heavy on the non-fiction but I suppose that's what they do.

More interestingly, the cheque or whatever will be handed over at the Festival Neue Literatur in New York in February. Curated by my friend Tess Lewis this year, it features a lot of writers I think are very good. Please check it out for yourself because it upsets me that I can't go.