RUSSIAN PRIZE LITERARY CONTEST WINNERS NAMED IN MOSCOW
ITAR-TASS News Agency, Russia
April 9, 2007 Monday 07:43 AM EST
The winners of the "Russian Prize" literary contest will be awarded
prizes at the "Hermitage" theatre here on Monday. They are being
annually adjudged to writers of the Commonwealth of Independent States
(CIS) and the Baltic countries, who write their books in Russian.
The main purpose of the contest is to help safeguard the Russian
language as a unique cultural heritage of the republics of the former
Soviet Union.
Nine authors had qualified for the finals: prose writer Turusbek
Madylbayev and Talip Ibraimov of Kyrgyzstan, Vilen Malvelian of
Armenia, Vladimir Lorchenkov of Moldova, Oleg Slepynin and Marat
Nemeshev of Ukraine, and also poets Shamshad Abdullayev of Uzbekistan,
Anastasia Afanasieva and Dmitry Lazutkin of Ukraine.
The prizes are awarded in the "Big Prose", "Minor Prose" and "Poetry"
nominations. Each winner will get eighty thousand roubles.
Approximately four hundred authors from sixteen post-Soviet countries,
including South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and the self-proclaimed Dniester
Republic took part in the contest.
The jury of the contest, chaired by writer Chingiz Aitmatov, was
made up of eminent writers, poets and literary critics of Russia
and the CIS. They included Alexander Voznesensky, Boris Kuzminsky,
and Yevgeny Abdullayev.
The non-commercial "Institute of Eurasian Studies" and the "Caucasian
Institute of Democracy" had initiated the "Russian Prize" contest in
2006. Itar-Tass is its general information partner.