Tunisian Assia Elkadhi wins the Euro-Mediterranean literary contest “A Sea of Words” 2018
16 September 2018 | Press release
The awards ceremony for the literary contest takes place this afternoon in Barcelona and features the Councilor for Culture, Laura Borràs, and the journalist and writer Tomás Alcoverro.
Among 250 original stories by young people from 33 countries, Assia Elkadhi wins with a story about memory and exile the 1st prize of the literary contest organized by the IEMed.
The Last Exile has been chosen as the best story among the 250 received in the 2018 edition of the Euro-Mediterranean literary contest “A Sea of Words”, which for eleven years has been organized by the IEMed in collaboration with the Anna Lindh Foundation for Dialogue between Cultures .
This story tells in the first person the fascinating story of a young woman through the memories of her mother, who the author equates to her native land. The suffering of life, the passage of time and the uncertainty of exile come together in this story by Tunisian Assi Elkadhi (27 years old), who this afternoon will receive the award in Barcelona at an event organized by the IEMed at the Institut d ‘Estudis Catalans (IEC). The 2nd and 3rd prize will also be announced.
The following three stories are the first 3 prizes:
1st prize – The Last Exile · Assia Elkadhi (Gafsa, 1991, Tunisia)
2nd prize – Dancing with the Past · Ilham Zenid (1989, Morocco)
3rd prize – Red. White. Red. · Dana Ozolina (1992, Latvia)
The award ceremony will be attended by 15 the other 14 young winners, from Albania, Algeria, Egypt, Germany, Greece, Jordan, Lithuania, Lebanon, Morocco, Poland, Romania, Syria and Sweden. All of them have been selected by an international jury as authors of the best stories in this edition, which this year was articulated under the slogan “Memory and identity: rethinking cultural heritage” within the framework of the European Year of Cultural Heritage.
The event is chaired by the Councilor for Culture of the Catalan Government, Laura Borràs, and features also acting general director of the IEMed, Josep Ferré, the members of the international jury of the event, and the journalist and veteran correspondent in Lebanon, Tomás Alcoverro, who will deliver a lecture on how Catalan and Spanish literatures reflect the Middle East.
Convened every year since 2008 by the IEMed and the Anna Lindh Foundation for Dialogue between Cultures, the “A Sea of Words” contest is aimed at young people between 18 and 30 years old from the 43 countries of the Euro-Mediterranean region. The winning stories are published in anthologies.