“Orange Book Prize 2012” awards ceremony took place on the evening of February 20 during which the contest results were finalized and the names of the winners announced.
Short story: “Hamo’s Favorite Flower” by Nare Sahakyan
Novel: “Skin Ache” by Hovhannes Teqgyozyan
Fairy tale: “Your Excellency Bad Old Witch” by Erazik Grigoryan
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Poetry: “Magus Kings” by Shushanik Tamrazyan
The winning work in each category will be printed by quantity of 500 and the authors of winning works, save “ Prize for Popularity” winner, will be as well awarded with monetary prize – 500 000 AMD.
During the awards ceremony Francis Gelibter, Orange Armenia CEO, congratulated the winners, saying, in particular: “The great enthusiasm stirred up by this contest this year comes to prove that we are on the right path. The contemporary literature has a big potential in Armenia, indeed. This contest aims to support the contemporary Armenian writers, beginner or celebrated, present their unprinted works to the large public, the best of which will become a book.”
Orange Book Prize 2012 was held in 2 stages. In the first stage the Jury selected maximum three best works in each category, which then were published on Orange official webpage for public vote. The readers were provided the chance to vote for their favorite works from January 15 till February 15 via Facebook. On February 15, at noon, the online voting came to its end and the final results were fixed. It’s worth noting that all works together have collected 7580 votes, and those three with maximum votes were as follows: “Your Excellency Bad Old Witch” by Erazik Grigoryan, “The Narcissus” by Elfik Zohrabyan and “Requiem” by Karen Antashyan. The winner of the “Prize for Popularity” was selected purely based on the results of online voting. It is “Your Excellency Bad Old Witch” which collected 2253 votes.
The winning works of all categories were selected by the Jury vote. Online voting results were considered as the vote of one Jury member.
As a reminder, total 470 applications for participation in the contest have been presented, out of which 155 short stories, 236 poems, 39 novels and 40 fairy tales. The contest is held already for the second time. In the scope of this contest 130 works competed last year.
This year the contest was open to those writing in Armenian (Eastern or Western) and having presented a literary work never published in the past. For the first time this year Orange Book Prize was open to the Diaspora as well, i.e., to those writing in Armenian.
The objective of this contest is to boost interest in reading, to discover the contemporary Armenian writers and spread their works among larger group of readers through the daily evolving electronic media. With this initiative Orange is also celebrating the Book and Reading Festival together with Yerevan, as Yerevan has been announced the World Book Capital by UNESCO for the period till April 2013.
Orange Book Prize is organized and implemented jointly with the “ArmenianBookCenter” NGO.
