National Library launches prize for indigenous narratives

Registration for the Literary Prize of the National Library, granted since 1994 and considered one of the most prestigious in the country, opened this Monday (12). The objective is to recognize the intellectual quality of works published in Brazil. This year, the novelty is the Akuli Award, a category created with the aim of preserving ancestral songs and orality narratives, collected in Brazil among indigenous peoples, riverside peoples and cultural matrices. Akuli was a famous narrator of ancestral stories, belonging to the Arekuná culture, who transmitted to the German ethnologist Theodor Koch-Grünber the oral literature that served as the basis for Mário de Andrade to write the classic of Brazilian modernist literature Macunaíma. For the president of the National Library, Marco Lucchesi, the award aggregates and completes oral memory and narratives transmitted from generation to generation. “The idea is to favor oral production, when it becomes part of fixation, the book, the memory that recovers, because the National Library is also the home of memory”, says Lucchesi. Enrollment Enrollment, which is free, runs until July 28th, and can be done online. The prize has ten categories: Poetry (Alphonsus de Guimaraens Prize), Romance (Machado de Assis Prize), Short Story (Clarice Lispector Prize), Translation (Paulo Rónai Prize), Social Essay (Sérgio Buarque de Holanda Prize), Literary Essay (Prize Mario de Andrade), Graphic Design (Aloísio Magalhães Prize), Children’s Literature (Sylvia Orthof Prize), Youth Literature (Gloria Pondé Prize), and Stories of Oral Tradition (Akuli Prize). The winner of each one receives R$ 30 thousand. Individuals with Brazilian nationality, with works in the 1st edition, written in Portuguese and published by national publishers between May 1, 2022 and April 30, 2023, may apply. in Legal Deposit, that is, who has sent a copy of their publication to the National Library, by any means or process, with the aim of ensuring the collection, safekeeping and dissemination of Brazilian intellectual production. The work is also required to have the ISBN number (International Standard Book Number) printed, the system that numerically identifies books according to title, author, country and publisher, even individualizing them by edition. The complete notice is available on the National Library website. According to the president of the institution, “the National Library awards seek to highlight the literary production of our country”. These are awards that bear the names of renowned writers, and that comprehensively summarize the plural voices of our country, added Lucchesi. *Intern under the supervision of Akemi Nitahara

Agência Brasil