These are the writers of the Oceans Prize
The Portuguese writers H.G. Cancela, Bruno Vieira Amaral and Luís Quintais are among the ten finalists of the Oceanos Literature Prize, today announced the selection jury of the prize, in São Paulo, Brazil.
Brazilians Milton Hatoum, João Silvério Trevisan, Ricardo Aleixo, Sérgio Sant’Anna and Marília Garcia, and Mozambicans Luís Carlos Patraquim and Mbate Pedro are the remaining seven candidates for the Oceanos Prize, according to the result of the jury meeting announced in the evening of Monday, in Brazil (dawn of Tuesday, in Portugal).
HG Cancela is a candidate with the novel “People of Drama”, winner of the Grand Prix of Romance and Novel of the Portuguese Association of Writers (APE) last July, and Bruno Vieira Amaral, with “Today you will be with me in paradise” , the second novel of the writer, distinguished with the prizes PEN Narrative Club and Jose Saramago with the novel of debut, “The First Things”.
Luís Quintais is among the finalists with “The Still Night”, a work that succeeded the “Plucking Feathers in a Swan’s Corner”, APE’s Grand Prix of Poetry, in 2017.
From Brazil, Milton Hatoum is a candidate with “A Noite da espera”, winner of the Juca Pato Award 2018, of the Brazilian Union of Writers, João Silvério Trevisan, with the narrative “Father, father” and Sérgio Sant’Anna, with the book of short stories “Night Angel”, while the poetry books “Antiboi” and “Slow Motion” secured the nominations of Ricardo Aleixo and Marília Garcia, respectively.
It was also the poetry that brought the Mozambicans Luís Carlos Patraquim and Mbate Pedro to the list of finalists of the Oceans Prize: the first, with “O Deus rest”; Mbate Pedro, with “Vacuum”.
These ten authors, with their works, are the result of a list of 60 semifinalists, announced in August, selected, in turn, from a total of 1,364 candidates, presented by 346 different publishers, involving authors from Portugal, Brazil, Mozambique, Cabo Green and East Timor. There were also candidates from countries where Portuguese is not the official language, such as Romania, Spain and Switzerland.
The Oceanos Prize was established in partnership with Itaú Cultural in Brazil in 2015, after the extinction of the Portugal Telecom Literature Prize, in order to distinguish annually the best works published in the Portuguese language.
The writers, professors and researchers Ana Paula Tavares (Angola), Daniel Munduruku, Flora Sussekind, Heitor Ferraz and Julián Fuks (Brazil), Helena Buesco, Maria João Cantinho and Pedro Mexia (Portugal) are the members of the final and intermediate jury. selection of the ten finalists) of this year’s award edition.
Since last year, Oceanos has stopped awarding only the titles published in Brazil, to open the candidatures for the book edition in the different countries, provided that in the Portuguese language, in order “to promote the editorial exchange and the reciprocal knowledge between the different expressions cultural and literary “of Lusophony.
“Oceanos progressively increased the premium for Portuguese-language books published in Brazil, for the prize condition that provides a snapshot of the literary invention in all quarters” of the Portuguese language, said the curator and coordinator of the prize, the Brazilian cultural manager Selma Caetano, quoted in the statement from the organization, ensuring that internationalization proved to be “the right way”.
The increase in registrations this year led to the expansion of the evaluation jury (which selected the first 60 semifinalists), from 65 elements in 2017 (50 Brazilian and 15 Portuguese jurors) to 73 this year, bringing together writers, journalists, teachers and literary critics of Mozambique, Angola and Cape Verde, as well as Portugal and Brazil.
The curator of the prize this year has Portuguese writer and journalist Isabel Lucas, and Brazilians Mirna Queiroz, editor, and Manuel da Costa Pinto, a journalist, as well as Selma Caetano.
The four winners of this year’s Oceans Prize will be announced on December 7th.
The winner of the 1st prize will receive a hundred thousand reais (approximately 24,000 euros), the second, 60,000 reais (14,300 euros), the third, 40,000 reais (about 9,58,000 euros) the fourth, 30 thousand reais (close to 7.2 thousand euros).
The sponsorship of the prize is guaranteed by the Itaú group, the Cultural Development Fund, the Portuguese Government, and CPFL Energia.
In 2017, Portuguese writer Ana Teresa Pereira won the Oceans Prize with the novel “Karen”, succeeding José Luís Peixoto, who won it in 2016 with “Galveias”.