Applications for the 2019 edition of National Book Prize and the Terramaxka Prize – the National Book Prize for children and adolescents – are now open. As always, the call for applications is for local publications in English or Maltese, published the year before.
The prizes award the authors of those publications that are judged to have high literary and cultural or academic merit, according to the criteria associated with the category.
Submissions are to reach the National Book Council by April 16 at noon, together with an application form and four copies of the submitted book or books. It is important that the applicant indicates the right category for each submission.
There are eight categories for the National Book Prize for adults: novel, short story, poetry, drama, literary non-fiction, translation, general research, and biographical and historiographic research.
The six categories for the Terramaxka Prize for children and adolescents are three categories for original works for children and adolescents divided by age group (0-7, 8-12 and 13-16), and another three categories for translated works for children and adolescents, again one per age group.
A new category was added to the National Book Prize for adults this year: literary nonfiction, a type of prose that employs the literary techniques usually associated with fiction or poetry to report on persons, places and events in the real world. The genre of literary nonfiction is broad enough to include travel writing, nature writing, science writing, sports writing, biography, autobiography, memoir, the interview, and both the familiar and personal essay.
Another significant change in this edition of the National Book Prize is the increase in the prize value allocated to all categories in the prize (excluding the Terramaxka categories of translation). The amount has risen from €1,000 to €4,000. As for the translation categories for the Terramaxka categories of translation, the amount has doubled from €1,000 to €2,000.
The prize for the Best Emergent Writer was also increased from €2,000 to €4,000.
This year round, a new prize category was included in addition to the Lifetime Achievement Award and the Best Emergent Writer Award. It’s the Poet Laureate Award, to be awarded to the writer who, being the recipient of the National Book Prize for poetry, has previously won any other National Book Prize Award.
The winner will be awarded with the title of Poet Laureate and a prize sum of €4,000. This will be paid in four equal instalments on a yearly basis on the condition that during that year the poet writes a substantial amount of poetry to be published as a single collection.
Applications must be sent by post or delivered by hand to Michael Mercieca, National Book Prize 2019, National Book Council, c/o Central Public Library, Professor Joseph J. Mangion Street, Floriana FRN 1800.