The Bridge Book Award
The Bridge / Il Ponte is a project of Casa Delle Letterature of Rome and the Embassy of the United States of America in Rome. The Center for Fiction served as the American partner from 2019-2021. For more information about The Bridge Book Award, please click here.
The Bridge Book Award unites the Italian and American cultures, and aims to strengthen mutual understanding through literature. The prize covers the translation costs in the opposite language. Its purpose is to promote knowledge of the best and most recent publications in fiction and nonfiction of the two countries.
The prize includes two components, one Italian and one American with a mirror structure, and is awarded to a new work of fiction as well as a new work of nonfiction of the two countries each year. The American authors are selected in two rounds of voting by an Italian jury, made up a number of jurors for fiction and for nonfiction. Symmetrically, the Italian authors are selected by an American jury with the same numbers of members.
The selection of candidates for all the books, as well as the selection of the members of the jury, is made by the Executive Committees of the Italian and American Prize composed by one representative of all the institutions that curate and promote it. The books in competition, ten for each country, i.e., five for fiction and five for non-fiction, must have been published in their respective countries during the year preceding the award. The winning authors receive a $1,000 cash prize, plus the translation of their book into the opposite language.
Winners of The Bridge Prize 2021
Italian Selection – Fiction
- Emanuele Trevi, Due vite, Neri Pozza
Italian Selection – Nonfiction
- Elisabetta Rasy, Le indiscrete, Mondadori
American Selection – Fiction
- Danielle Evans, The Office of Historical Corrections: A Novella and Stories, Riverhead Press
American Selection – Nonfiction
- Patricia Gaborik, Mussolini’s Theatre Fascist Experiments in Art and Politics, Cambridge University Press
Winners of The Bridge Prize 2020
Italian Selection – Fiction
- Romana Petri, Pranzi di famiglia, Neri Pozza
Italian Selection – Nonfiction
- Massimo Castoldi, Insegnare libertà, Donzelli
American Selection – Fiction
- Maaza Mengiste, The Shadow King, W. W. Norton & Company
American Selection – Nonfiction
- Pamela O. Long, Engineering the Eternal City, University Chicago Press
