The sixth Lletraferit Award for Novel 2023 has been declared empty and Oscar Mora has won the sixth Diafebus Award for Youth Novel with “La tempesta de Sant Joan”, in an edition in which the writer Ferran Torrent has received the Lletraferit Award for Valencian Culture .
The Lletraferit Awards, organized by Ediciones Plaza and Llibres de la Drassana, were made public this Friday at a gala held at the Biohub of the Marina de València, which was attended by nearly two hundred people, according to the organization.
The event, led by the communicator Maria Fuster and which included a performance by the Marjal group, was also attended by the president of the Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua, Verònica Cantó, councilors of the Valencia City Council, writers, editors and prominent members of the Valencian cultural scene .
On behalf of the jury, the editor Vicent Baydal pointed out that, despite the volume of works presented, “some, without a doubt, of quality, and we encourage authors to try to publish them”, they have not found “none that creates a myth literary, that can become, for one reason or another, a benchmark for Valencian literature, culture and society, which is what we always seek with these awards”.
“For this reason, we have decided to declare the 2023 Lletraferit Novel Prize void,” he said, adding that of the 39 works presented “more than 90% have been authored by men, so we make a public appeal to also have voices and feminine gazes in the next editions”.
At the same gala, the Diafebus Juvenile Novel Prize was awarded, won by Óscar Mora (Dolores, 1978) with La tempesta de Sant Joan, a work of which Josep Vicent Miralles, a member of the jury, highlighted that it is “a hilarious novel of adventures that connects with the youth classics of our adolescence, but also with modern references such as Stranger Things.
It is a work in which two gangs of friends arrive in Dénia to spend the summer of their lives and “very soon they will find themselves surrounded by a mystery that they will have to unravel, related to a strange brotherhood of fishermen and a thief of archaeological relics. An adolescence dreamed by all, with adventures, mystery, action, fun, love and friendship”.
“We are convinced that La tempesta de Sant Joan will continue the good line marked by previous Diafebus Prize successes such as La Casa Invisible, by Carme Cardona, or Aitana Torrent, hunter of scary creatures, by Alfons Pérez Daràs, which are helping us to build a fiction universe of its own, with a Valencian imagination and universal values”, he stressed.
Also yesterday, the Lletraferit Prize for Valencian Culture was awarded to the writer Ferran Torrent (Sedaví, 1952), in recognition of a career of indisputable literary success, “since, without a doubt, he is the best-selling and most widely read author in Valencian of our time” , remarked the editor Toni Sabater.
“Torrent has raised an authentic altarpiece of Valencian society through twenty novels, such as Thanks for the tip, L’illa de l’holandés, Limited Society, Life in the Abyss or the recent Memoirs of myself, who have created an indelible mosaic of enormous vivacity and have turned him into an indispensable writer who will remain in Valencian literature from the 20th to the 21st century”, he concluded.
