Melville House Takes a Stand

Melville House, who won the most recent Best Translated Book Award for Gail Hareven’s The Confessions of Noa Weber, is “withdrawing from any future involvement” with the prize.

The reason? Amazon recently announced that they would underwrite the award with a donation of $25,000, which would be divvied up “between promotional costs and prizes for the translators and authors.”

Well Melville House has no interest in accepting the corporation’s cash, saying that “Taking money from Amazon is akin to the medical researchers who take money from cigarette companies.” Read Melville founder Dennis Loy Johnson’s full statement here.

(via GalleyCat)

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Isaac Fitzgerald has been a firefighter, worked on a boat, and was once given a sword by a king, thereby accomplishing three out of five of his childhood goals. Formerly of The Rumpus and McSweeney’s and most recently the founding editor of BuzzFeed Books, Isaac is now the co-host of BuzzFeed News’ Twitter Morning Show, #AMtoDM. He also appears frequently on The Today Show to talk books, and is co-author of Pen & Ink: Tattoos and the Stories Behind Them and Knives & Ink: Chefs and the Stories Behind Their Tattoos (with Recipes) (winner of an IACP award), and the author of a YA novel and picture book forthcoming from Bloomsbury. He uses Twitter.

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