Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida wins the Grand Prize for Novels and Novellas 2023 from the Portuguese Writers’ Association (APE) for her novel “Every Wound is Beautiful”.

Made up of Carina Infante do Carmo, Carlos Mendes de Sousa, Cândido Oliveira Martins, Cristina Robalo Cordeiro and Francisco Topa, and coordinated by José Manuel de Vasconcelos, the jury notes, in the excerpt from the minutes quoted in the press release announcing the winner of the prize, that ‘following a long discussion on the similar quality of a heterogeneous set of novels’, it decided to ‘favour a novel that makes brevity the place of mystery and poetry: In the restraint of its writing lies the essential strangeness of a world that is at once naive and cruel, childlike and adult. And the reader is taken, by the words as much as by the drawings, into the realm of a merciless fantasy, beyond reality.’

The prize is worth 15,000 euros and this year was sponsored by DGLAB, Grândola Town Council, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the Camões Institute.

> https://www.publico.pt

A jury made up of Fernando Batista, Mário Avelar and Paula Mendes Coelho unanimously decided to award the Grand Prize Branquinha da Fonseca for Short Stories to the titel “Compendium for Unearthing Clouds” by Mia Couto.

The Grand Prize Branquinha da Fonseca for Short Stories, established in 2023 by the Portuguese Writers’ Association (APE) and sponsored by Cascais Town Council and the D. Luís I Foundation, is designed to honour a work of short stories in Portuguese every year. In this 2nd edition, works published in 2023 competed.

The monetary value of this Grand Prize is €12,500.00 (twelve thousand five hundred euros) for the honoured author.

> apescritores.pt/

The novel Misericórdia (“Mercy”) by Lídia Jorge has won the prestigious Prix Médicis étranger 2023 ex-aequo with Han Kang, author of “Impossibles Adieux” from South Korea, in the category of the best foreign book. Misericórdia was published in France at Éditions Métailié, in the translation of Elisabeth Monteiro Rodrigues.</>

The prize has has been awarded every year since 1970 by the Prix Médicis jury to a foreign novel published in French translation during the year. Among the former winners are Milan Kundera, Julio Cortázar, Doris Lessing, Umberto Eco, Elsa Morante, Antonio Tabucchi, Paul Auster, Philip Roth, Orhan Pamuk, David Grossman, Lili Brett, Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir, and Andrei Kurkov.</>

This is the first time that the honour has gone to a Portuguese-speaking author.

Lídia Jorge’s novel has already won five prizes: Grand Prize for Novels and Novellas from the Portuguese Writers’ Association (APE); the Urbano Tavares Rodrigues Prize; the Portuguese PEN Club Prize; the Fernando Namora Prize and the Transfuge Prize for the Best Lusophone Novel 2023. Additionally, “Misericórdia” has been nominated for the Femina Prize, also in the category of foreign novel.

> publico.pt/culturaipsilon/lidia-jorge-vence-premio-medicis-exaequo-han-kang
> prixmedicis.wordpress.com/2023/06/07/calendrier-de-lautomne-2023/

We are proud to announce that three of our authors are among the semifinalists of the Oceanos Prize 2023!

“Mercy”, by Lídia Jorge , “We Are the First Person of the Plural”, by José Luís Peixoto, and “The Mantle of the Night”, by Carola Saavedra.

The 2023 edition of Oceanos Prize, one of the most important Portuguese language literature prizes, honours for the first time two categories, prose and poetry. The 41 semi-finalists have four different nationalities: 24 Brazilians, 14 Portuguese, 2 Cape Verdeans and 1 Mozambican. 20 prose semi-finalists have been selected out of 1,466 entries. Among the jury members are Guiomar de Grammont and Joca Reiners Terron.

In the last stage, the final jury will select the two winners. Each of them is going to receive 150,000 Reais (around 27,000 euros).
> https://associacaooceanos.org/edicoes/2023/sobre

The book series “Pilar’s Diary” of the Brazilian bestelling author Flávia Lins e Silva will gain a feature film adaptation produced by Conspiração, with co-production by Star Original Productions and distribution by Star Distribution. This news was announced during The Walt Disney Company panel at the 14th edition of their Winter Show. The film is produced by Juliana Capelini and Renata Brandão, with Eddie Vogtland as associate producer and script by Flávia Lins e Silva and João Costa. The series has sold approximately 500,000 copies so far.

The premiere of the adaption of “Pilar’s Diary” begins with the “Pilar’s Diary in the Amazon”. It will include elements of Brazilian culture to teach important values about the environment and the protection of nature. The film is set for 2024.

> https://telaviva.com.br/01/06/2023
> https://centraldepousadas.com.br

Nicole Witt interviewed by Bernardo Gutiérrez for El Periódico de España. //

Brazilian fiction has hardened. Both new voices (Tatiana Salem Levy, Itamar Vieira Junior, Geovani Martins, Morgana Kretzmann) and established names (Chico Buarque, Paulo Lins, Patrícia Melo) deal bluntly with the racism, classism, machismo, violence and hatred that the Bolsonaro era has made more visible.

Bernardo Gutiérrez is a Spanish and naturalized Brazilian journalist, writer and researcher who forged a career specializing in major reports and chronicles, strongly linked to Latin America, especially Brazil, where he has lived for a good part of his life.

> READ MORE (in Spanish)

Rights & Licences workshop for the Frankfurt Book Fair Invitation Programme 2022 (15th October 2022)

For the fifth time in a row and for the second time in attendance since the pandemic, Nicole Witt and Jordi Roca held a full-day workshop on Rights & Licences for the 20 participants of the Frankfurt Book Fair Invitation Programme (on Saturday before the book fair started). The guests were publishers from 20 countries and six continents. The workshop strengthened the participants for their international rights negotiations by presenting main points and pitfalls of agreements and how to negotiate them. After the presentation, participants had the opportunity to ask questions and clarify specific issues they faced. Another part of the seminar was dedicated to the role of different market players such as agents and scouts and how new publishers can find business partners, how to offer their books, how to pitch and how to organise their work and submissions. The plenary presentation was followed by practical work in smaller groups.

The Invitation Programme from the Frankfurter Buchmesse,  supported by the Federal Foreign Office, offers small independent publishing companies from Africa, the Arab world, Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean the chance to participate. For publishing companies from these regions, globalisation is a two-edged sword. Access to the world market seems easier thanks to all-pervasive communications. At the same time, the advance of new conglomerates makes it harder to break into the market.

Some voices of the participants:

»The seminars were very enlightening. I am now equipped with more publishing tools and knowledge.«
Chinyere Elohor Egbordi, Ouida Books, Nigeria

»The seminars were an invaluable opportunity for the publishing houses and for my country and for myself, as a professional.«
Rena Suleymanova, Fabula Publishing House and Libra Kitab Publishing House, Azerbaijan

El 01/07/2022 a las 20:00

Lectura y charla con Esther Paniagua y Mónica Subietas: El colapso de la civilización.

El Instituto Cervantes presenta a dos autoras españolas en el festival de literatura literaTurm de Fráncfort: Esther Paniagua y Mónica Subietas. Moderación: Nicole Witt

En coorganización con AC/E y la Dirección General del Libro y Fomento de la Lectura del Ministerio de Cultura en el marco de España como País Invitado de la Feria del Libro de Fráncfort.

> READ MORE

01/07/2022 um 20:00

Lesung und Gespräch mit Esther Paniagua y Mónica Subietas

Der Zusammenbruch der Zivilisation

Das Instituto Cervantes präsentiert zwei spanische Autorinnen, Esther Paniagua und Mónica Subietas, auf dem Literaturfestival LiteraTurm in Frankfurt.

Moderation: Nicole Witt, literarische Agentin (MertinWitt)

In Zusammenarbeit mit der Generaldirektion für Bücher und Leseförderung des Kulturministeriums im Rahmen von Spanien als Gastland der Frankfurter Buchmesse.

> READ MORE

“Except for My Heart, All Is Well”, the most recent novel by Héctor Abad, occupies the 1st place of the bestselling list of the leading Colombian newspaper El Tiempo for 23 weeks since its publication in October 2022. “La Oculta” is currently number 3 on the list.

Among the most successful Spanish-language publications of the whole of 2022, Abad is in fourth place after Isabel Allende, Leonardo Padura, and Almudena Grandes, according to the Colombian Vanguardia.

> https://www.vanguardia.com