5th Fereshteh award keen on promoting Persian language 

In an exclusive interview with Mehr News Agency, Saleh Beheshti, who is in charge of holding the Fereshteh Award, a short story writing and photo competition, said this cultural event previously sought to encourage the culture of reading books.

He added the closing ceremony will be held on May 22 to June 21, adding that after a four-year experience, this year's Fereshteh Award will be held internationally. 

"From the fourth edition of the award, the book of selected works, in addition to Persian, was also published in English. The works of the photo section, which were added to the prize in recent times, were exhibited in other countries and exhibitions were held in several foreign cities," Beheshti said.

"There are more than 200 million Persian speakers around the world, but despite the cultural capacities of Iran, this capacity has never been utilized; however, the most important ways of cultural diplomacy are to benefit from such capacities," he added.

"This cultural event aims to discover and introduce the brilliant talents and encourage the culture of reading books and promote the Persian language," Beheshtihe noted.

"Therefore, the reason for holding this award internationally is to create a space for non-Persian speakers working in the field of Persian literature to have an opportunity to present their works. Of course, this does not mean that the rights of young Iranian writers would be ignored, as this is going to happen in an equal situation for everyone."

Beheshti further described the arrangements for the Fereshteh Award abroad, saying that coordination has been made with several international cultural institutions and some embassies and educational institutions has taken place, including the ECO Institute and the embassies of India and Austria, universities in Spain, Australia, Canada, etc.

"At the moment, many of our literary works are translated into different languages in different countries," he said, adding that this shows that they have been able to fully understand the Persian language, and perhaps this will help them to gain more skill in writing the story in Persian.

MS/PR