New York, NY (July 24, 2025)—The Academy of American Poets, a leading champion of poets and poetry, is pleased to announce the 2025 winners of the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award and the Raiziss/de Palchi Book Prize. 

The Harold Morton Landon Translation Award, the Raiziss/de Palchi Translation Awards, and the Ambroggio Prize are part of the American Poets Prizes, a suite of twelve major poetry awards and fellowships through which the Academy commits more than $1.3 million each year to support poets at various stages of their careers. 

 

HAROLD MORTON LANDON TRANSLATION AWARD

Gabriel Gudding’s translation of Friends with Everyone by Gunnar Wærness (Action Books, 2024) has won the 2025 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award, judged by Roger Sedarat.

Founded in 1976, the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award is given annually in recognition of a translation of poetry from any language into English that was published in the previous calendar year and that demonstrates literary excellence. The winner receives $1,000. Previous winners include Patrizio Ceccagnoli, Clayton Eshelman, Stephanie McCarter, W. S. Merwin, Susan Stewart, and Rajiv Mohabir.

Gabriel Gudding is also the translator from the Norwegian of Inventarium by Pedro Carmona-Alvarez (forthcoming this year with co•im•press). He is the author of four poetry collections, including Then Settlers (forthcoming with Audiatur in 2026 in Norwegian, as translated by Gunnar Wærness), and Literature for Nonhumans (Ahsahta Press, 2015). Gudding is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship and The Nation/Discovery Award. He teaches creative writing, theories of authorship, and translation studies at Illinois State University.

Judge Roger Sedarat wrote of the winning translation: “Only a twenty-first century poet trained far beyond the basic verse mechanics in source and target languages, able to capture the crackles of a burning world through the idiosyncrasies of a thwarted genius, could render such a collection into English. Gudding has effectively translated through a prism of punk, allowing himself, like his source poet, to remain an agent of fire.”

Submissions to the 2026 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award will be accepted online from September 15, 2025 to February 15, 2026. Review the eligibility requirements and official guidelines.

 

RAIZISS/DE PALCHI BOOK PRIZE

Peter Covino’s translation of What Sex Is Death? by Dario Bellezza (University of Wisconsin Press, 2025) has won the 2025 Raiziss/de Palchi Book Prize, judged by Anna Kraczyna, Jennifer Scappettone, and Charif Shanahan.

Founded in 1995 through a bequest to The New York Community Trust by Sonia Raiziss Giop, the The Raiziss/de Palchi Translation Awards recognize outstanding translations into English of modern Italian poetry through a $10,000 book prize and a $25,000 fellowship, given in alternating years. Previous winners include Moira Egan, Will Schutt, Anthony Molino, Ann Snodgrass, Michael Palma, and Stephen Sartarelli.

Peter Covino is a poet, translator, and editor who was born in Sturno, a town in the province of Avellino, Italy. He is the author of the full-length poetry collections, both from New Issues Poetry and Prose, The Right Place to Jump (2012) and Cut off the Ears of Winter (2005), which won the 2007 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award. He is the recipient of many other honors, including the 2019 National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship. Covino is an associate professor of English in the PhD Program at the University of Rhode Island. He lives in Providence. 

Judges Anna Kraczyna, Jennifer Scappettone, and Charif Shanahan wrote of the winning translation: “With the publication of What Sex Is Death?, creatively edited, translated, and introduced to the Anglophone public by Peter Covino, a necessary yet heretofore largely eclipsed chapter in the history of Italian contemporary poetry is restored to a wider public. Some seventy poems from a career encompassing more than twenty books appear here in all their fleshly ardor and invective: Covino’s labor ushers us whole into the Rome of this queer iconoclast composing in the wake of Rimbaud, its beasts and hemlock drinkers, demonstrating that in a world hankering after angels ‘The real / triumph is that of the quotidian.’”

 

About the Academy of American Poets

The Academy of American Poets is the United States’ leading champion of poets and poetry. The organization annually awards more than $1.3 million to poets across the nation. It also operates Poets.org, the world’s largest publicly funded poetry website, and organizes National Poetry Month, the largest literary celebration in the world. Additionally, the Academy publishes Poem-a-Day and American Poets magazine, provides free educational resources for K–12 educators and adult learners, and leads the Poetry Coalition, a network of organizations dedicated to promoting the vital role of poetry in our culture.