“This was the most competitive edition of the LeYa Prize since its creation”, with 907 applications from 14 countries received, says LeYa, adding that Portugal, Brazil, Angola and Mozambique are the countries “where the most originals come from”.
A new member was admitted to the jury, the Brazilian journalist and historian Josélia Aguiar, who was curator of the Paraty Literary Festival between 2017 and 2018, author of a biography of Jorge Amado, winner of the Jabuti Prize in 2019, and currently the director of the Library Mário de Andrade, in São Paulo.
The poet Manuel Alegre continues as president of the jurors, whose cast includes José Carlos Seabra Pereira, professor at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Coimbra, Lourenço do Rosário, former rector of the Polytechnic University of Maputo, the writer Nuno Júdice, the journalist and critic literary Isabel Lucas and the Angolan poet Ana Paula Tavares.
The LeYa Prize, to be announced on November 14th, was created in 2008 with the aim of distinguishing an unpublished novel written in Portuguese, being the literary prize with the highest monetary value for unpublished novels in the Portuguese language. Last year, unanimously, the winner was Brazilian Celso Costa with the work “The art of dribbling destinations”.
