The Valencia City Council annually convenes the “City of Valencia” Literary Awards, an initiative to promote literary creation that over the years has consolidated recognition and reach beyond the national level. The Department of Cultural Heritage and Cultural Resources is aware of the role that as a promoter of cultural activity from the public sector it must play in order to contribute to the dynamism of the cultural sectors, and in this case, of the importance of prestigious literary awards that under the name of “City of Valencia” accommodate all narrative modalities.
In this sense, the call for the “City of Valencia” Literary Awards includes two awards in each category, highlighting the desire to support literary creation both in the Valencian language and in Spanish in all its forms, which are: poetry, narrative , essay and theater. This fact makes it possible to attend to the need to disseminate and promote literary work in the Valencian language in parallel with literary production in the Castilian language, which allows recognition and projection of awards at national and international level.
The prizes awarded and the financial amount are as follows for each modality:
– Prize for Narrative in Valencian Isabel de Villena: €12,000
– Prize for Narrative in Spanish Vicente Blasco Ibáñez: €12,000
– Celia Amorós Spanish Essay Award: €10,000
– Josep Vicent Marquès Prize for Essay in Valencian: €10,000
– Valencian Eduard Escalante Theater Award: €8,000
– Max Aub Theater Prize in Spanish: €8,000
– Maria Beneyto Poetry Prize in Valencian: €6,000
– Juan Gil-Albert Poetry Prize in Spanish: €6,000
In addition to the cash prize, the Department of Cultural Heritage and Resources commissions the publishing of the winning work to publishers of recognized prestige in the literary sector; this is why these works, despite having the institutional and financial support of Valencia City Council, are not listed as municipal publications, as they are published by private publishers who are in charge of their distribution and sale to the public autonomously and independently.
The annual call opens the deadline for the presentation of works, prior to the approval of the bases that govern their regulation, between the months of March and April, with the verdict of the jury being issued in the months of September and October; the awards ceremony takes place between the months of November and December, in a solemn ceremony at the municipal hall.
The bases for the 2019 edition can be consulted at the following link.
For more information on the next edition of the Ciutat de Valencia literary awards, you can contact the Cultural Resources Service of Valencia City Council (srecursosculturales@valencia.es / 962 081 701).
read more
To speed up and facilitate the search for publications, a classification by subjects has been made, excluding from the lists those works for which there are no funds for their acquisition; however, it is possible to find some out-of-print titles in public libraries for your consultation.
The City Council of Valencia has developed a stable and continuous over many years an intense publishing activity, reflected in a wide production of publications of all kinds.
Currently, the promotion of publishing activity is undertaken by the Department of Heritage and Cultural Resources, incorporating as a fundamental objective the publication of books that serve to spread Valencian history, culture and tradition.
From this perspective, the editorial lines approached from 2015 by the Cultural Resources Service, in charge of coordinating and materializing publication projects, have been defined by the diversity of content with a common denominator: the dissemination of matters related to the city and its cultural and heritage environment, in the widest sense of these terms.
