In 2018, the European Union Prize for Literature (EUPL) celebrated its 10th anniversary. To mark this special occasion, we organised a virtual and physical journey through the literary Europe, in addition to hosting a writing contest exclusively open to all previous 108 EUPL winners, who won the award between 2009 and 2017.
Since its creation in 2009, the EUPL aims to put the spotlight on the creativity and diverse wealth of Europe’s contemporary literature in the field of fiction, to promote the circulation of literature within Europe, and to encourage greater interest in non-national literary works.
The Prize, which is co-financed by the Creative Europe programme of the European Commission, aims to achieve three main goals: to promote cross-border mobility of those working in the cultural sector; to encourage the transnational circulation of cultural and artistic output; and to foster intercultural dialogue.
EUPL Writing Contest
The EUPL Writing Contest “A European Story: EUPL Winners Write Europe” was a unique short fiction competition that celebrated Europe, literature and – above all – 10 years of the European Union Prize for Literature.
36 EUPL winning authors from a total of 26 different countries have participated in this contest. Their stories, in both original versions and translations, are available in the publication on this website. We encourage you to read each of these fascinating European stories.
Announcing the winners
The EUPL Anniversary Edition celebrated 5 winners: Jean Back (Luxembourg), Lidija Dimkovska (North Macedonia), Gast Groeber (Luxembourg), Jelena Lengold (Serbia), and Ioana Pârvulescu (Romania). Discover their winning stories in their original language, and translated into English, here.
The winners of the writing contest were determined through a combination of a public and professional vote. The public vote was open until 21 October 2018, while the professional vote was judged by a professional jury, made up of distinguished experts from the field of literature, including literary critics, journalists, authors as well as booksellers, in autumn 2018.
The members of the professional jury included Maria-João Costa (Portugal), Nina George (Germany), Juancho Pons (Spain), Cathy Rentzenbrink (United Kingdom), Liana Sakelliou (Greece) and Marnix Verplancke (Belgium).
The winners of the different categories were announced at the Awards Ceremony taking place in Vienna in November 2018.
