Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexijevich will be present during the International Literature Festival Utrecht to receive the Belle van Zuylenring 2024 and deliver the accompanying Belle van Zuylen lecture.
Belle van Zuylenring 2024 award ceremony
During the ILFU International Literature Festival Utrecht (21 September to 5 October), the Utrecht Literature Prizes 2024 will be awarded.
The Belle van Zuylenring, an international honorary award for a writer's oeuvre with high social commitment, goes to Belarusian author and investigative journalist Svetlana Alexijevich. She will receive this important prize during the ILFU festival day Exploring Stories on Saturday 28 September and will deliver the Belle van Zuylen lecture that evening.
Award C.C.S Cronestipendia 2024
Dieuwertje Mertens, Willemijn Tilmans and Vivian de Gier will receive this year's C.C.S Cronestipendium on 22 September. This is a grant from the municipality of Utrecht for promising Utrecht authors. They will each receive 3,000 euros to enable their next publication.
About Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich
Svetlana Alexievich (Ukraine, 1948) grew up in Belarus when that country was still part of the Soviet Union. Because of her criticism of Lukashenko's regime, she spent longer periods abroad on several occasions, including again since 2020. Her work, which is subject to censorship in the Soviet Union and Belarus, has received numerous awards, culminating in her being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2015. The committee called her polyphonic work "a monument to suffering and courage in our time". Designating herself as 'a man of the ear', Alexievich invented a literary genre all her own. Her books consist of witness accounts shaped to tell the story of a particular (often unheard of) group or period. Women at the Front in World War II (War has no woman's face), survivors of the war in Afghanistan (Sinkboys), ex-Soviet citizens (The end of red man) or children (The last witnesses). 'I am interested in the little man,' she said in her Nobel Prize speech. 'The little big man, I would like to say, because suffering enlarges man. In my books, that man tells his small history and thus also the big one.'The award committee of the Belle van Zuylenring called her work 'exceptionally grand and exceptionally intimate' and seamlessly fitting this year's ILFU theme: I am many stories. The full report will be available at www.ilfu.com on 28 September. That same evening at 7.30pm, Alexijevich will deliver the Belle van Zuylen lecture.
C.C.S Cronestipendia
The C.C.S Cronestipendia are named after Utrecht prose writer C.C.S Crone (1914-1951). The municipality of Utrecht awards these incentive prizes annually in cooperation with ILFU. With the stipends, Utrecht gives promising writers the chance to develop and publish new work. This year, the jury received 23 entries. Previously, stipends were awarded to Lisa Weeda, Radna Fabias, Lucas Rijneveld, Ellen Deckwitz and Munganyende Hélène Christelle, among others. This year, the judging committee consisted of Femke Essink (literary critic), Daphne Huisden (author) and Marjolijn Hof (children's book author). The committee chose Dieuwertje Mertens (1983), who made his debut with publisher Querido in September 2023 with the novel Mothers. Saints, praising her fresh, original voice and her style and sense of language. In addition, the committee chose Willemijn Tillmans (1976), editor and writing teacher, whose debut novel Prodigy, which will be published next autumn by Uitgeverij Thomas Rap. According to the committee, a delightful family novel with a confident narrative voice and plenty of humour. The third stipend goes to journalist, editor and writing coach Vivian de Gier (1975) whose biography of children's book author Thea Beckman will be published by Uitgeverij Balans, and which the committee praised for, its style, structure and idiosyncratic approach.
About the Belle van Zuylenring and lecture
Since 2019, the Belle van Zuylenring is awarded to (international) writers whose work reflects strongly on social themes. Previously, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Margaret Atwood and Elena Ferrante received the ring, which is named after the internationally renowned Utrecht-based writer Belle van Zuylen (1740 - 1805), who placed a strong emphasis on equality and emancipation in her work. Her reputation as a feminist-avant-la-lettre and fighter for freedom was nuanced in 2021 by the publication on Utrecht's slavery past that also examined how Belle van Zuylen, who never explicitly spoke out against slavery, related to her family's colonial fortune.
Presenting Belle van Zuylenring to Svetlana Alexijevich
Saturday 28 September, TivoliVredenburg, during Exploring Stories (1 pm - 6 pm)
During the ILFU festival afternoon Exploring Stories, the Belle van Zuylenring will be awarded to Svetlana Alexijevich. In a three-quarter-hour programme, the award report will be recited preceded by a programme that will pay tribute to Alexijevich's work.
For tickets and more information: www.ilfu.com
Belle van Zuylen lecture by Svetlana Alexijevich
Saturday 28 September, TivoliVredenburg, 19:30 - 21:00
Prior to the lecture by-and conversation with-Svetlana Alexijevich, Lisa Weeda will deliver a laudatio.
For tickets and more information: www.ilfu.com
NB all visitors receive the printed lecture in a special issue
ILFU 2024
From 21 September to 5 October, Utrecht will again be all about literature. Every year, some 200 writers and over 20,000 visitors visit ILFU. In recent years, ILFU has attracted big international names such as Jonathan Franzen, Margaret Atwood, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Elena Ferrante, Michel Houellebecq, Nick Cave, David Mitchell, Ali Smith and Édouard Louis.
ILFU's 2024 hosts include David Nicholls, Rachel Kushner, Pirkko Saisio, Deborah Harkness, Constance Debré, Layal Liverpool, Nicolas Lunabba, Brenda Navarro, Vamba Sherif, Radna Fabias and Elizabeth O'Connor. The full line-up of ILFU 2024 will be announced in the coming months. Ticket sales for The Night of Poetry, Book Talks, Exploring Stories and YALFU (Young Adult day) have now started.
See the entire festival programme at https://ilfu.com
ILFU also invites writers throughout the rest of the year. The online platform ilfu.com publishes daily stories, poems, interviews and essays and is now supported by 1200+ members
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