CELEBRATING GRAZIA DELEDDA
The Galtellì Literary Prize
International Prose Contest
Sardinia – October 2015
Call for Submissions – The Galtellì Literary Prize
The village of Galtellì, Sardinia, is launching an international
prose contest dedicated to the great Sardinian writer Grazia
Deledda, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1926,
who set her masterpiece Canne al Vento, or Reeds in the
Wind, right in Galtellì.
The top five selected writers will be invited to Sardinia for
workshops and lectures from 19 to 24 October 2015. The
final winner will be announced during that week. Galtellì
intends to publish a collection of the best pieces (the final
structure of the book will depend on the writings received).
Moreover, Galtellì plans to establish an ongoing ‘Autumn
Appointment’ with writing retreats, conferences and an award
ceremony, of which the planned week in October 2015 will
be the first.
Guidelines for submissions to 2015 ‘Celebrating Grazia Deledda
– The Galtellì Literary Prize’
The novel selected to inspire and stimulate writers is Canne al
Vento. Submissions should reflect or echo the issues that
preoccupied Grazia Deledda's writing, such as identity, class and
religion.
The deadline for submissions is 20 June 2015.
The short list will be officially announced in August 2015.
Prizes:
1st place wins 1,000 euros, travel to (up to 1,000 euros) and
accommodation in Sardinia and publication;
2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th places win travel to (up to 1,000 euros) and
accommodation in Sardinia and publication.
One unpublished submission per writer. The applicants must write a
cover letter explaining why they believe their piece dovetails with
Grazia Deledda’s work.
Maximum number of words per piece: 5,000
Genre: Fiction (the genre will be changed every year)
Language: English (unpublished works written in other languages
but translated into English will also be considered), Italian and
Sardinian
Grazia Deledda
Grazia Deledda was born in Nuoro in 1871 and died in Rome
in 1936. Almost an autodidact, she devoted her life to
describing Sardinia and the Sardinian populace between the
nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, portraying their harsh
lives and combining the imaginary and the autobiographical.
The Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to her “for her
idealistically inspired writings which with plastic clarity
picture the life on her native island and with depth and
sympathy deal with human problems in general.” Her works
include famous books such as Elias Portolu, Cenere (which
was the inspiration for a silent movie with the iconic Italian
actress Eleonora Duse), L’Edera, La Madre (The Mother, of
which D. H. Lawrence wrote a famous introduction) and the
already-mentioned Canne al Vento. Cosima, a semiautobiographic account, was published posthumously. Her
masterpieces have been translated into dozens of languages,
Chinese included.
The President of the Jury
Neria De Giovanni divides her time between Alghero, Sardinia and Rome. She is president of the
International Association of Literary Critics, the first woman and first Italian to hold that position in
the Paris-based UNESCO-affiliated organization. A lecturer in the Faculty of Arts at the University
of Sassari, she has published forty books, twelve of which are about Grazia Deledda, and she is
responsible as well for the online journal Portale Letterario and Nemapress Editions. As a popular
lecturer on Grazia Deledda, De Giovanni participates regularly at conferences and cultural centers
in Italy and abroad and has created radio programming for RADIORAI and television shows for
RAI, including “Grazia Deledda in Rome”. She is the recipient of numerous Italian and
international awards.
The Members of the Jury
Asale Angel-Ajani is an award-winning writer and Anthropologist. She is the author of Strange
Trade: The Story of Two Women Who Risked Everything in the International Drug Trade, a
nonfiction account of African women drug smugglers imprisoned in Rebibbia Prison in Rome, Italy.
Angel-Ajani has been living in Italy over a year. Published widely in academic, literary and trade
journals and magazines her fiction and non-fiction writing explores human rights, state violence and
historical memory. She holds an M.A. and Ph.D. from Stanford University as well as an M.F.A. in
Fiction. She currently teaches Creative Writing and Humanities at Hong Kong Baptist University.
Evan Fallenberg is the author of two novels – Light Fell (Soho Press) and When We Danced on
Water (HarperCollins) – and a noted translator of Hebrew fiction, drama and screenplays. He has
won or been shortlisted for the following prizes, among others: the American Library Association's
Barbara Gittings Stonewall Book Award for Literature; the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction;
the National Jewish Book Award in fiction; the PEN Translation Prize; and the TLS Risa
Domb/Porjes Prize for Translation of Hebrew Literature. He teaches fiction and literary translation in
the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar-Ilan University and in the MFA
Program in Creative Writing at City University of Hong Kong. Fallenberg is a recipient of
fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Vermont Studio Center and the National Endowment for
the Arts.
The Members of the Jury
Mark Polizzotti’s books include Revolution of the Mind: The Life of André Breton (Farrar, Straus &
Giroux, 1995; revised ed., 2009), which was a finalist for the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for Best
Nonfiction; the collaborative novel S. (1991); Luis Buñuel’s Los Olvidados (British Film Institute,
2006); and Bob Dylan: Highway 61 Revisited (Bloomsbury, 2006). His articles and reviews have
appeared in The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal, ARTnews, The Nation, Parnassus, Partisan
Review, Bookforum, and elsewhere. The translator of over forty books from the French, including
works by Gustave Flaubert, Patrick Modiano, Marguerite Duras, André Breton, Raymond Roussel,
and Jean Echenoz, he directs the publications program at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New
York.
Victoria Redel is the author of four books of fiction and three books of poetry most recently a poetry
collection, Woman Without Umbrella and a short story collection, Make Me Do Things. Her novel
The Border of Truth weaves the situation of refugees and a daughter’s awakening to the history and
secrets of her father’s survival and loss. Redel’s novel Loverboy was adapted for a feature film
directed by Kevin Bacon. Her work has been widely anthologized, translated into six languages and
has received numerous awards including the S. Mariella Gable Novel Award, Wick Poetry Prize, and
was a finalist for the Laughlin Prize. Redel is on the faculty of Sarah Lawrence College. She has
taught in the Graduate Writing Programs of Columbia University, Vermont College and was the
2013 McGee Professor at Davidson College. She has received fellowships from The Guggenheim
Foundation, The National Endowment For The Arts and The Fine Arts Work Center.
Galtellì,
Sardinia
Galtellì (Garteddi in Sardinian) is a beautiful village in the Province of Nuoro, Sardinia, located about
80 km from the airport of Olbia.
Galtellì was a historic episcopal see, in the current diocese of Nuoro, in the territory of the ancient
sentence of Gallura and, in particular, in the territory of the Barony. It has an important heritage of
historical, cultural and environmental resources and is one of the better-preserved historic centres in
Sardinia, with low whitewashed houses with patios and loggias. Galtellì has numerous churches, the
ethnographic museum and the Literary Park dedicated to Grazia Deledda. The cathedral of Saint Peter
houses a cycle of Romanesque frescoes. The proximity to the sea (Galtellì is only 9km from the Gulf
of Orosei) makes the town a destination point for those staying on the coast, but visitors also attend
the numerous events and cultural initiatives that take place year round. The innovative concept of
“albergo diffuso” or widespread hotel, a structure of more than 100 rooms in the villages with
centralised services (reception, workshop rooms, offices, auditorium, amphitheatre, etc.) is another
appealing characteristic.
Galtellì is a municipality listed in four important national lists: Borghi Autentici d’Italia (Genuine
Villages of Italy), Parchi Letterari d’Italia (Literary Parks of Italy), Bandiera Arancione (Orange
Flag, a touristic and environmental quality mark by Touring Club of Italy) and Legambiente Turismo,
which promotes the development of good strategies and practices for the sustainable tourism by
setting up a new way of discovering and living in Italian places.
Galtellì
Olbia
City University of Hong Kong – Sardinian Retreat – October 2014
Ready to go to Sardinia?
Other Things You Should Know:
Please do not send your story by mail and do not fax it.
Please submit your story online at https://galtelliliteraryprize.submittable.com/submit
Formatting/presentation of the attachment: DOC or DOCX, 12 pt, Times New Roman,
double-spaced. Name, contact information, and word count are all mandatory in the cover
letter.
When a story is accepted for publication, we are buying first-publication rights. Once we've
published your story, you are free to include it in your own collection (book publishers are
always happy when subsets of a book they are considering have previously been published by
reputable literary journals or contests collections).
Website:
http://www.galtelliliteraryprize.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GaltelliLiteraryPrize
We look forward to reading your stories!
Cooperation with Associazione Culturale ATZOVIOS – Amici di Grazia Deledda.
Acknowledgments: Galtellì thanks Ciriaco Offeddu and Beyond Thirty-Nine,
support given to the organization of this Literary Prize.
, beyondthirtynine.com, for the