Taiwan Literature Awards prize-giving to take place at NMTL in Tainan Dec 9

台灣文學獎12月9日在台南國立台灣文學館舉行頒獎典禮

TAIPEI (Taiwan News)-- The award ceremony of the Taiwan Literature Awards, which has been widely recognized as the top literature honor of the country, will take place at the auditorium of the National Museum of Taiwan Literature (NMTL) in Tainan City at 3 p.m. on December 9.

The awards to be conferred are the awards for Novel, Taiwanese Short Story, Hakka Short Story, Indigenous Peoples’ Chinese Short Story, and Screenplay. Minister of Culture Cheng Li-chiun (鄭麗君) will also attend the award ceremony to congratulate all the award winners. Members of the public are invited to attend the ceremony. Every attendee will be given a copy of “The Collection of 2017 Taiwan Literature Awards Winning Works” as a gift.

The 2017 Taiwan Literature Awards include six awards-- Novel, Poetry, Screenplay, Taiwanese Short Story, Hakka Short Story, and Indigenous Peoples’ Chinese Short Story. All the entries have been evaluated on the basis of three reviews—the initial review, the secondary review and the final review—and every winner was selected after a consensus was reached following hot debates among the members of the jury.

The winner of the biggest prize is novelist Lien Ming-wei (連明偉), who won the novel award with his work “青蚨子” and NT$1 million in prize money. Lien, born in 1983, is the youngest novel award winner in the history of the literature awards. The novel has wide and rich content, with citations from local records and ancient odd tales as well as accounts of the history of Yilan costume and cuisine. The striking imagination employed in the work greatly impressed the jury. There is no winner of the award for poetry, the prize of which was raised to NT$500,000, this year.

As many as 71 poetry collections entered the competition, but as the members of the jury couldn’t reach a consensus, no winner was selected for the award this year. Tseng Ting-yi (曾莛詒) won the award for Screenplay and NT$300,000 in prize money for the work of “咬人貓.” The jury said the screenplay has the symbolism characteristics of a modern fable that seems trivial but does a good job describing human aloofness and the burden of life.

The award for Taiwanese Short Story was won by Chen Cheng-hsiung ( 陳正雄), who has delved into Taiwanese-language writing for years. His winning work “命” won the recognition of the jury with the writing about ghosts and monsters as well as native stories. Chen won NT$200,000 in prize money.

Hakka writer Tseng Chun-luang (曾俊鑾) won the award for Hakka Short Story with his work “頭家娘 選擇” and the prize money of NT$200,000. Tseng’s work won the jury’s recognition for the writing about multiple choices in life and the story about suppression of love that reflect Hakka people’s custom as well as life circumstances and sentiment.

The award for the Indigenous Peoples’ Chinese Short Story was won by young Ami writer Nakao Eki Pacidal, whose winning work “一個剪檳 榔場的風雨之夜” is based on the dialogues that take place in the Tafalong tribe. The jury said the writer’s portrayals of drunken talks that interpose different languages (Japanese, English and Chinese) realistically and delicately depict the tribal life. The prize money for the award is also NT$200,000.