This year, the Anna Seghers Prize 2023 will be awarded to the Haitian author Makenzy Orcel and the German playwright Bonn Park. The award ceremony will take place on June 10, 2023 in the Academy of Arts on Pariser Platz.
Image gallery
Makenzy Orcel
Bonn Park
The Haitian novelist and poet Makenzy Orcel is the first Francophone author from Latin America to receive the Anna Seghers Prize. The juror Gernot Kamecke emphasizes in particular his novels "Les Immortelles" (The Immortals), "L'Ombre animale" (Animal Shadow) and "L'Empereur" (The Emperor), "whose language-playing dream worlds dissect Haiti's social and political present ".
With Bonn Park, a German prizewinner is being honored whose focus is on drama, which also makes him an exception in the history of the Anna Seghers Prize. Judge Christine Wahl highlights the wide range of sources of inspiration for Park's work, from Chekhov and Schiller to Walt Disney and American high school musicals. "As an astute observer with a literally unprejudiced view, he looks at his material, condenses it into lucid analyzes of the present with a gifted awareness of human and social abysses - and as a post-postmodern romantic gives (theater) literature a refreshingly new artistic tone".
The Anna Seghers Prize, each endowed with 12,500 euros, is awarded by the Anna Seghers Foundation to young authors from German-speaking countries and Latin America who, in the spirit of Anna Seghers, want to use art to contribute to the creation of a more just society.
The selection of the prizewinners takes place in alternating years with personalities from literary life commissioned by the foundation.
(Program in German)
Additional information
Academy of Arts on Pariser Platz, Plenary Hall Admission free, registration at ticket@adk.de or on site, daily 10 a.m. to 8 p.m
