In the opening speech, the deputy director of the Foundation for the Preservation and Publication of Sacred Defense Works and Values commented on the decline in the quality and quantity of the works authored over the past two years.
“We think this literature has fallen behind the culture… which has not been reflected in the works well,” Hamid Hesam said.
“However, we think that the pens of some writers are influential because they once linked the readers to the culture,” he added.
Several publishing institutes and a number of people working in cultural fields related to the Sacred Defense (1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war) were appreciated during the ceremony, which was attended by many cultural figures and officials including Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Mohammad-Hossein Saffar Harandi.
In order to express their dissatisfaction with the quality of the works produced in the Sacred Defense genre over the past year, the jury selected no first, second, or third prize winner in several categories.
Following is the list of winners of the 10th edition of the annual event:
Poetry Section:
* The jury gave the second prize in the Classical Style Section to Gholamreza Kafi for his “Symphony of Barbed Wire” but deemed that no works deserved the first or third prizes.
* “A Bunch of Memories, a Heart Full of Words” composed by Reza Kazemi was the winner in the Blank Verse Section while Hamidreza Shekarsari’s “Illuminations without Reason” and Rajab Afshang’s “The Epic, the Very Identification Tag, and the Memory” shared second prize, and Maryam Saqlatuni’s “No News on the Names” was the third prize winner.
* “The Fifteenth Narration” compiled by Alireza Ghazveh received the second prize of the Anthology Section, where again no first or third prize was awarded.
Memories Section:
* “Chazzabeh” written by Fat’hollah Jafari and “Walky-talky, Kirkuk Operation” by Yahya Niazi were the second and third prize winners of the Autographed Memory Section respectively, but no work was given the first prize.
* “The Division of Good Men” compiled by Masumeh Sepehri and “Appreciation Breeze” compiled by Saeid Akef received the second and third prizes in the Verbal Memory Section while no work was able to win the first prize.
Fiction Section:
No work was given any prize in this section. However Habib Ahmadzadeh’s story “Chess with the Machine of Resurrection”, Majid Qeisari’s short story “The Wandering Calf”, and Sasan Nateq’s collection of stories “When the War Is Over” each received an honorable mention.
Fictional Biography Section:
No work was able to win any prize in this section, too, although Hossein Fattahi’s “The Fifth Medallion”, Farzam Shirazi’s “Higher than Every Height”, and Ebrahim Zahedi’s “Zahra’s Reza” each received an honorable mention.
War and Biography Section:
“Sacrifice to Mihrab” compiled by Seyyed Esmaeil Hosseini and “Love Dictionary” compiled by Nariman Abdi shared the third prize but no first or second prize was awarded.
Literary Research Section:
“Sacred Defense Bibliography” compiled by Firuzeh Borumand and “We Had War, We Had Stories” authored by Kamran Parsinejad won the first and second prizes respectively while “In the Color of Now” written by Habibollah Bakhshudeh and “The Manifestations of the Epic” written by Alireza Shah-Hosseini and Hossein-Ali Eslami shared the third prize.
Military Research Section:
Mohammad Dorudian won second prize for “The Process of Finishing the War” but no first or third prize was given.
Art Section:
* Mohammadreza Arianfar was awarded the third prize for the play “Yezra” in the Drama Section, in which no first and second prizes were awarded.
* “Noruz Abbasi won second prize for his illustrations for Mohsen Motlaq’s book “Welcome to Khorramshahr” in the Illustration and Photo Section but no work was deemed worthy of the first or third prizes.
* Behnam Zangi won the Best Cover Designer prize for his cover art of the book “When the Butterflies Came”.
Children’s Literature Section:
* No work was able to win first or second prize in the Story Section, but Hadi Khorshahian was given third prize for his “Raining in Heaven”.
* Hamid Akbarpur won the second prize for “The Bird Hunter” in the Novel Section, where, once again, no first or third prize was given.
MMS/HG
END
MNA
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