The Debut Prize
The Debut Prize was instituted in 2000 by State Duma Deputy Andrei Skoch, creator of the humanitarian foundation Pokolenie (Generation). Skoch originally conceived of Pokolenie as a medical charity to help provincial Russian clinics, sick children and pensioners. The Debut, Pokolenie’s only cultural project to date, has become a prize of national renown.
The Debut has a strict age limit: entrants may not be over the age of 25. Members of the Russian literary establishment were skeptical at first. They doubted that writers so young would have something to say to readers. Young writers might try their hand at poetry, they argued, but they didn’t have enough life experience to write a story or a novel.
However, the Debut has shown that a person’s life experience at any age is complete in and of itself. What a person knows about the world at 20 has been forgotten by the time he is 30. What he could have written at 20 he will no longer write at 30. He will write something else. Strangely enough, most writers live without their first book: it remains in their minds, in drafts. The Debut inspires young Russian writers to complete that first book. The Debut prompts them to commit to literature their unique experience, what might be described as the shock of their first encounter with grown-up life. Not just their new existential status, but daily events. Suddenly a person is faced with bank applications, having to pay rent and buy insurance; no one will fill out the forms for him, no one will answer for him. And he suddenly feels horribly alone in the world. This sort of loneliness, like any other, has a huge creative potential. The Debut brings in the first literary harvest of the writing generation — and it does so every year.
2010 marks the first year of Debut’s international program. Funded by Pokolenie, the program aims to present the works of Debut finalists and winners to the foreign reader. Collections of these works will be translated and their authors will be sent to international book fairs and festivals. This year’s collection appears in English and Chinese. Future collections will be brought out in French, German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, and so on. Since the number of Debut finalists and winners is only increasing, as is their level and mastery, publication of their works in English will continue.
Olga Slavnikova
Writer, winner of the Russian Booker Prize
Director of the Debut Prize
Voices from the Future
On Friday 23 April at 18.30 SLOVO Festival will present winners and finalists of the Debut Prize at Waterstones Piccadilly:
|
|
GULLA KHIRACHEV (pen name of Alisa Ganieva) was born in 1985 in the Dagestani village of Gunib in the Caucasus. The family later moved to Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan. A graduate of the Moscow Literary Institute, Ganieva works as a literary critic and also writes avant-garde children’s tales. “Salam, Dalgat”, her first work of fiction for adults, won the Debut Prize in 2009. |
|
|
POLINA KLYUKINA was born in 1986 in the city of Perm in the Urals. She is currently a student at the Moscow Literary Institute and the Publishing University’s Department of Journalism. Her stories have appeared in Novy Mir. Debut finalist in 2008. |
|
|
ALEXANDER GRITSENKO was born
|
|
|
ARSLAN
KHASAVOV was born in |
|
|
OLEG ZOBERN was born in 1980 in Moscow. A graduate of the Moscow Literary Institute, he is the author of numerous short stories in leading literary journals. Winner of the Debut Prize in 2004. Two of his short story collections were published in Holland. Critics have admired him for the “recurrent theme of the road and wandering and his distinctive literary style.” (Ex Libris) |
.jpg "Alisa Ganieva")
Tickets to the event are £3. Call Waterstones Piccadilly on 020 7851 2400 for information about ticket availabilty.
