₦airaland Forum

Meshack Asare Announced as the 2015 Winner of the Prestigious NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature

Oct 2014

Asare is the first African writer to be awarded the biennial $25,000 Prize

World Literature Today, the award-winning magazine of international literature and culture, today announced Meshack Asare as the winner of the prestigious 2015 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature. Awarded in alternating years with the renowned Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the biennial NSK Prize recognizes great accomplishments in the world of children’s storytelling.

Born in Ghana and currently residing in Germany, Asare is considered one of Africa’s most influential children’s authors. His representative text cited by the NSK was the multiple award-winning picture book Kwajo and the Brassman’s Secret, an Ashanti tale about wisdom versus the temptation of riches, distributed by African Books Collective.

Meshack Asare commented that “it is such a privilege, honor, and delight to receive the distinguished NSK Neustadt Prize for my modest contribution as an African, towards Children’s Literature.”

Robert Con Davis-Undiano, World Literature Today’s executive director who oversees the prize, said, “Meshack Asare is an important children’s literature author widely read across Africa. I’m so pleased that the NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature is now introducing him to the rest of the world.”

Highly respected within the literary community for its recognition of excellence, the NSK Prize goes to any writer or illustrator of children’s or young adult literature worldwide. An international jury of authors, all esteemed as children’s and young adult writers, chooses the winner. Nominations are based solely on literary merit as well as the perceived importance of an author’s or illustrator’s overall contribution to the legacy of children’s fiction.

The NSK Prize announcement was made at a Neustadt banquet on Oct. 24, 2014, that honored Mia Couto of Mozambique, winner of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, commonly referred to as the “American Nobel,” owing to many overlaps with the world’s biggest award. This is the first time in history that the Neustadt and NSK Prizes have been awarded to authors from the same region (Africa) in consecutive years.

The NSK juror who nominated Asare, Nii Ayikwei Parkes, is of British and Ghanaian heritage. He is a performance poet and social commentator who served in 2005 as BBC Radio 3’s Associate Artist-in-Residence and in 2007 as California State University–Los Angeles’ British Council Writer-in-Residence. Currently, he is one of 39 writers under the age of 40 from sub-Saharan Africa named to be a part of the Hay Festival's esteemed “Africa39” project. Along with Asare, Parkes will be attending the Neustadt Festival at the University of Oklahoma next fall.

The NSK Prize was first given in 2003 to inaugural recipient Mildred D. Taylor. The award’s first 10 years were recently profiled in the September 2014 issue of World Literature Today. Other winners have included Brian Doyle (2005), Katherine Paterson (2007), Vera B. Williams (2009), Virginia Euwer Wolff (2011) and Naomi Shihab Nye (2013). Winners are awarded $25,000, a silver medallion, a certificate of recognition and a literary festival hosted in their honor

http://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/blog/meshack-asare-announced-2015-winner-prestigious-nsk-neustadt-prize-childrens-literature#.VZ3irsLbKM8

Finalists Announced for the 24th Neustadt International Prize for Literature

An international, nine-member jury of accomplished writers have selected the shortlist for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, with their sole criterion for nominating finalists being distinguished and continuing literary achievement. Any living author in the world writing in any genre is eligible to be nominated. This year’s Neustadt Prize nominees are from around the globe, and, notably for the first time, female authors make up the majority of the finalists. Seven of the nine 2016 finalists are women; previously, the highest number of women nominees in a single year was four.

The finalists for the 2016 Neustadt International Prize for Literature are:


•Can Xue, China
•Caryl Churchill, England
•Carolyn Forché, United States
•Aminatta Forna, Scotland/Sierra Leone
•Ann-Marie MacDonald, Canada
•Guadalupe Nettel, Mexico
•Don Paterson, Scotland
•Dubravka Ugresic, Croatia/The Netherlands
•Ghassan Zaqtan, Palestine



Jury members will convene at the annual Neustadt Festival this October at the University of Oklahoma, where they will discuss the merits of each finalist and vote for the winner. The 2016 laureate, who will be announced at the festival’s closing banquet, will receive $50,000, a replica of an eagle feather cast in silver, a certificate of recognition and the next year’s Neustadt Festival hosted in his or her honor.

The Neustadt Prize was first given in 1970 to Italian poet Giuseppe Ungaretti. Notable winners have included Nobel Prize in Literature recipients Gabriel García Márquez (1972), Czeslaw Milosz (1978), Octavio Paz (1982) and Tomas Tranströmer (1990) as well as many well-known novelists, poets and playwrights. The 2014 Neustadt laureate was Mia Couto of Mozambique, who was recently shortlisted for the highly regarded Man Booker International Prize. The Neustadt Prize is the most prestigious international literary award given in the United States, often cited as “America’s Nobel” for its reputation as a lead-up to the Swedish Academy’s annual selection.

http://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/blog/finalists-announced-24th-neustadt-international-prize-literature#.VZ3iDMLbKM8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CmadmM5cOk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fndeDfaWCg