There are already winners of the València and València Nova awards. This Tuesday, the Institució Alfons el Magnà nim, which announces the contest, has announced the winners of this edition, very marked by parity, since half of the works have been written by female authors.
In the narrative modality in Valencian of the València award, Si tenim vida i salut by the writer, translator and educator Josep Franco has won. According to the jury, Si tenim vida i salut is a “vivid portrait of the Valencian cultural and literary world of recent decades, from post-war times to the present day”. In Spanish, the novel Tan tonta by the young author Carlos Catena Cózar has won the award “for the interesting construction of the narrator’s voice, which weaves a layer of suspicion and uncertainty over everything she narrates”.
The poets Raquel Casas Agustà and Francisco Miguel López have also received awards. Casas has won in the Valencian category with Contracció, a work that “creates powerful images that combine pain and beauty and maintain a perfect balance.” In the category of poetry in Spanish, she won the meditation on the ephemeral human condition by Miguel López López, De lo que fue no ser.
The essay prize has been taken by Raúl RodrÃguez-Ferrándiz, professor of semiotics of mass communication at the University of Alicante, for the work Disinformation and power. The jury has appreciated the contribution of the work in the study of the new forms of political communication in the era of globalization. In the graphic novel modality, the jury has awarded “the originality of the story and the risky page compositions” of L’anell de la serp by the illustrator Anna-Lina Mattar.
Among the laureates in the Valencia Nova we find Esther Climent in poetry in Valencian for Les absences, Demetrio Fernández in poetry in Spanish for Carrera de relevos and Teresa Ciges Barberán in the essay category for From the speakers to the podcasts. On the other hand, the mode of narrative in Spanish has been abandoned.
These are the oldest literary contests in Valencia, since the first calls were in the fifties. It divides its awards into two categories: València (narrative, poetry, essay and graphic novel) and València Nova (for unpublished authors of any age or under 36 years of age). Among all the modalities, 422 works have been presented this year, 46% more than last year.
In addition to financial compensation, the winners will also be rewarded with the publication of their works. The Alfons el Magnà nim Institute will publish the essay winners in its Estudis Universitaris collection; narrative and poetry in Valencian will have editions by Bromera, while Hiperión will take over those of poetry in Spanish and La Caja Books will have those of narrative in Spanish. Finally, the Andana publishing house will be in charge of the winning work of the Premi València de novel·la grà fica.
