Agenda Costa del Sol

Estepona City Council and the Manuel Alcántara Foundation announce the 2nd City of Estepona Novel Prize

The award is endowed with 25,000 euros and the winning work will be published by Editorial Pre-Textos

The Estepona City Council and the Manuel Alcántara Foundation have convened the second edition of the Estepona City Novel Award with the aim of supporting and stimulating literary creation in the Spanish language. The award has an endowment of 25,000 euros for the winning work, which will be published by Editorial Pre-Textos.

The mayor of Estepona, José María García Urbano, has highlighted the importance for the city of the continuity of this project, "which was born with great success and which reinforces Estepona's link with culture and support for artistic creation." “We are very satisfied to be able to contribute, with the help of the renowned Manuel Alcántara Foundation, to the development of this novel contest, which, due to its financial endowment and its link to the Pre-Textos publishing house, I am convinced that it will be widely accepted in the field of literature ”, added the mayor.

For his part, the president of the Manuel Alcántara Foundation, Antonio Pedraza, highlighted that the Estepona City Novel Award, as well as other Foundation competitions, show “our commitment to culture and, specifically, to the literary creations, supporting both novice writers and established authors "and thanked the Estepona City Council for its commitment" to this ambitious project that we are sure will become a national benchmark for literature. "

The writer and journalist Guillermo Busutil, director of the contest, has expressed his gratitude to the Manuel Alcántara Foundation, "of whose founding figure I have such excellent shared memories", and to its president Antonio Pedraza, for the trust placed in him to direct the second edition of this novel award, "for which we will work with the vocation that it be an important reference in the panorama of Spanish literature." Likewise, he thanked the mayor of Estepona "for his vital support for the award, and his trust in the jury for this second call and whose names represent the narrative talent and the prestige of their careers".

Busutil explained that the jury for the second edition of the Estepona City Novel Award is "plural in voices, eclectic in styles, brilliant in names and with a forged reading gaze". This year the writers Antonio Soler and José Antonio Garriga will be counted once again, “more than guaranteed by their literary awards, critics and readers” and Manuel Borrás, editor of Pre-texts, one of the leading labels in the publishing world.

In addition, this year two relevant literary voices are incorporated: Nuria Barrios, journalist, poet, translator of John Banville and author of novels and stories such as El zoo sentimental, Eight centimeters or Todo Arde, published by Alfaguara in 2020. And Eva Díaz Pérez, Nadal finalist in 2008, Malaga Novel Prize in 2013, awarded the Andalusian Journalism Prize in 2018 and director since 2019 of the Andalusian Center for Letters. The somnambulist of Verdú, Adriatic and The color of the angels, published by Planeta are some of his books.

Unpublished novels written in the Spanish language that have not previously been awarded in any other literary competition of any nature or place or are participating in another award may attend this call. It should be between 150 and 300 pages in length. The bases of the award can be consulted on the Manuel Alcántara Foundation website www.manuelalcantara.org and on the Estepona City Council website www.estepona.es whose link is:

RULES II CITY OF ESTEPONA NOVEL PRIZE

The form of participation will be exclusively by electronic means, sending the novel in PDF format to the email awardciudaddeestepona@manuelalcantara.org The deadline for receiving the works will end on June 4, 2021 and the jury's decision will be made public before December 31 of 2021.

The first call for the Estepona City Novel Award was attended by more than 300 copies from different parts of the national territory and from countries such as Germany, France, Egypt, Canada, USA, Guatemala and Mexico.

The novel that won the prestigious award was 'Tumbas de agua', by the Mexican writer and translator Miguel Tapia.