The Ovid Prize was a literary award given each year from 2002 to 2011 by the Romanian Cultural Institute and the Romanian Writers' Union. It honored an author from any country for their collection of writing. The prize was named after the Roman poet Ovid, who died in exile in Tomis, a former Greek colony on the Black Sea (now called Constanța in Romania). Winners received 10,000 euros.
The Ovid Festival Prize, worth 5,000 euros, was created in 2002. Notable recipients include George Szirtes, Tomaž Šalamun, and Ismail Kadare. In 2007, the prize’s purpose changed. Beginning in 2008, it was given to a young, accomplished writer. In 2012, the prize was paused because of financial difficulties.
History
Both prizes were started together by the Writers' Union of Romania and the Romanian Cultural Institute (Romanian: Institutul Cultural Român). The winners are chosen by the festival's jury. The ceremony happens during the Days and Nights of Literature Festival (Romanian: Zile și nopți de literatură), which takes place in Neptun and Mangalia in June. The prize is also called the Ovidius Prize.
Past winners include Orhan Pamuk, Andrei Codrescu, Amos Oz, Jorge Semprún, and António Lobo Antunes.
The 2011 winner was the Czech writer Milan Kundera. In a letter to the jury's leader, Kundera, who could not attend, accepted the award. Kundera gave the prize money to Humanitas Publishing House, which published most of his books in Romanian. He said the money should help Romanian literature.
The 2012 event was not held because there was not enough money.
List of laureates
- Milan Kundera, France
- Ognjen Spahić, Montenegro
- Jean d'Ormesson, France
- Madeleine Thien, Canada
- Péter Esterházy, Hungary
- Joey Goebel, USA
- Orhan Pamuk, Turkey
- Irina Denezhkina, Russia
- Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Russia
- Andrei Codrescu, USA/Romania
- George Szirtes, Great Britain
- Mario Vargas Llosa, Peru
- Cengiz Bektaş, Turkey
- Amos Oz, Israel
- Tomaž Šalamun, Slovenia
- António Lobo Antunes, Portugal
- Ismail Kadare, Albania
- Jorge Semprún, Spain
- Alain Robbe-Grillet, France