Abdellatif Laâbi was announced as a finalist for the Neustadt Prize 2020 for his novel Beyond the Barbed Wire on July 22, 2019.
The Neustadt International Prize for Literature is a biennial award sponsored by the United States’ University of Oklahoma and its international literary publication, World Literature Today. The prize for adult literature, worth $50,000, is awarded to a living writer anywhere in any genre. First given in 1970 to Italian poet Giuseppe Ungaretti, it has been won by Nuruddin Farah (1998), Mia Couto (2014), and Edwige Danticat (2018). Aminatta Forna was a finalist in 2016.
The jurors for the 2020 edition were announced on June 11 and they are Russian-born literary nonfiction writer Anna Badkhen; Kapka Kassabova, a native of Bulgaria and a writer of journeys and geographies; Philippine American poet Joseph O. Legaspi; poet, translator and essayist Philip Metres; Dunya Mikhail, an Iraqi American poet and essayist; poet and translator André Naffis-Sahely; Vi Khi Nao, whose work includes poetry, fiction, and film; Felipe Restrepo Pombo, a Colombian journalist, editor and author; and Katherena Vermette, a Métis poet and writer of adult and children’s literature.
The finalists for the prize announced are;
- Emmanuel Carrère (France), The Adversary
- Jorie Graham (United States), Fast
- Jessica Hagedorn (Philippines / United States), Dogeaters
- Eduardo Halfón (Guatemala), Mourning
- Ismail Kadare (Albania), Broken April
- Sahar Khalifeh (Palestine), Wild Thorns
- Abdellatif Laâbi (Morocco), Beyond the Barbed Wire
- Lee Maracle (Canada), Celia’s Song
- Hoa Nguyen (Vietnam / United States), Red Juice
The winner of this year’s prize is set to be announced on October 16th at the 2019 Neustadt Literary Festival.
You can read more about Abdellatif Laâbi, at our friends at Arablit who prompted this post.
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