South African Author Longlisted for PEN International’s Inaugural New Voices Award
15 Aug 2013
The South African PEN centre of PEN International (SA PEN) is pleased to announce that local writer Masande Ntshanga is one of six young writers from around the world to be included in the inaugural PEN International/New Voices Award longlist. The annual award was established to encourage new writing in the countries in which PEN International operates and to provide a much needed space for young and unpublished writers to submit their work. The award will actively encourage entries from diverse linguistic regions and communities.
The award is open to unpublished writers aged 18-30 and PEN International invited PEN centres around the world to submit works from one male and one female writer of their choice. SA PEN asked notable members of the literary community to nominate writers and subsequently twenty-one writers were invited to submit a work of prose or poetry. A judging panel read the submissions “blind” (i.e. they were not aware of the author of each piece) and selected two works to send on to PEN International. Similarly, the submissions that PEN International received were judged “blindly” by a panel consisting of Hephzibah Anderson, Bibi Bakare-Yusuf, Carole Blake, Alain Mabanckou, Sjón, and Luisa Valenzuela.
PEN International said of the award: “There was an enormous response to the prize, and it was not easy to decide upon a longlist. We would like to thank all the candidates who entered the competition, the PEN Centres who nominated them and the panel of six judges for all their hard work.”
A shortlist of three writers will be invited to attend the 79th PEN International annual Congress, to be held in Iceland in September, to read from their work. The $1,000 USD award will be presented to the winning writer on the 11th September. The winning entry will be published in PEN International magazine and a selection of the texts submitted for the award will appear in a special e-anthology.
PEN International/New Voices Award 2013 longlist:
“Between Dublins” by Elizabeth Reapy (Irish PEN)
“Carnet de Voyages/Travels Notebook” by Emmanuel Lickel-Skiba (PEN Haïti)
“Space” by Masande Ntshanga (South African PEN)
“Temporada de halcones/Falcon Season” by José Pablo Salas (PEN Mexico)
“The Collective Name for Ninjas” by Claire Battershill (PEN Canada)
“Turmstraße, o, Un amor sens còs/Turmstraße, or, A Love With No Body” by Maëlle Dupon (PEN de Langue d’Oc [Occitan PEN])