Annual Literary Prizes awarded

The Writers’ Union of Moldova (USM) has awarded on Thursday, March 22 the annual literary prizes to 12 personalities. The USM Council has awarded four prizes. The OMNIA award, for the whole literary activity was given to Nicolae Dabija and to Nicolae Manolescu (president of the Writers’ Union of Romania); The Prize of Excellence was awarded to Leonida Lari; the prize “Cultural relations” – to Vasile Barbu (Serbia). The awards of jury for Poetry were received by Alexe Rau for his volume “Absenţa e mai mare ca prezenta”, and a post-mortem award was conferred on Steliana Grama for the volume “Perfusion of dreams”. The prize for prose was received by Spiridon Vangheli for the anthology “Carte de citire şi gandire”; the award for literary criticism was given to Ion Ciocanu for his collection “Vase comunicante”. The best publicist was named Iurie Colesnic for his book “Apostolul Unirii – Pan Halippa”; the books for children nomination was won by Titus Stirbu for “Ce înseamna a fi om”. The prizes for the literary debut went to Vasile Toma, for his volume of poetry “Intre iubire şi nimic” (“Between love and nothing”) and another award went to a student, Dumitrita Paladi for the book “O poeta gasita de poeme” (“A poetess found by the poems”). The head of the jury this year, Nicolae Dabija said that Moldova has a very active literary life, as an example in 2006 it was a real avalanche of books to compete for the USM awards (300 volumes of poetry, prose and criticism). As long as in Moldova people do write books, we are not a poor nation, and the big number of copies tells us that we do have readers, said the writer. USM president, Academician Mihai Cimpoi, said Moldovan writers are loyal to the belief that the writer is also a citizen, so they have done a great job in literary journalism. The prizes awarded this year were of MDL 2000 (awarded by the jury) and MDL 2500 (awarded by the Council), exceeding considerably those of the previous years. The prizes are awarded yearly since 1990.