Orange Book Prize public vote launched

Today the second stage of the Orange Book Prize 2012 – the public voting – was launched. As results of the first stage, during which the Jury had to choose maximum three works in each category, the following works have been selected:

Short story. Aghasi Tadevosyan – “Daily Stories from my America”, Nare Sahakyan – “Hamo’s Favorite Flower”, Vruyr Tadevosyan – “The Woman with Blue Tie”

Novel. Narine Kroyan – “Jericho”, Hovhannes Teqgyozyan – “Skin Ache”

Fairy tale. Elfik Zohrabyan – “The Narcissus”, Erazik Grigoryan – “Your Excellency Bad Old Witch”, Meruzhan Harutyunyan – “Little Donkey and Grey Wolf”

Poetry. Karen Antashyan – “Requiem”, Lola Koundakjian – “Advice to a poet”, Shushanik Tamrazyan – “Magus Kings”

Starting today all readers can get acquainted with the works having overcome the first selection stage on the official webpage of Orange Armenia : www.orangearmenia.am. On the same page they can vote for their favorite ones, by identifying themselves via Facebook social network and clicking the «like» button. On February 15, 2013, at noon, the results of the online vote will be summarized and the number of votes per participant will be fixed.

The winning works of all genres will be chosen by the vote of the jury. Online voting results will be considered as the vote of one jury member. A special “ Prize for Popularity” will be awarded to the work having collected the maximum number of readers’ votes, regardless of the genre.

Francis Gelibter, Orange Armenia CEO, said: «We congratulate all those who have merited Jury’s estimation. Starting from now a very interesting period  begins, when all those who like reading will be able to read and share their opinion. This is an exceptional  moment as generally the wide public discovers literary works after  they become books. We hope that with public readings, discussions and meetings with the authors we will involve wide circles of readers and will stimulate interest towards reading in general.»

The winning works in each genre will be printed by quantity of 500. The authors of winning works of each genre will be awarded with monetary prize (500 000 AMD each), save “ Prize for Popularity” winner. Names of the “Orange Book Prize 2012” winners will be announced on February 20th , 2013, during the award ceremony.

Total 470 applications for participation in the contest have been presented, out of which 155 short stories, 236 poems, 39 novels and 40 fairy tales. The contest is held for the second time. The previous year, 130 works competed in the frames of this contest.

As a reminder, four nominations of the contest – short story, novel, fairy tale and poetry, are open to those writing in Armenian (Eastern or Western) and having presented a literary work never published in the past. For the first time this year Orange Book prize is open to the Diaspora as well, i.e., to those writing in Armenian.

The objective of the contest is to discover Armenain litterarary works through the daily evolving electronic media, spread them among large group of readers and boost interest towards reading. Orange Book Prize will be organized and implemented in cooperation with Armenian Book Center NGO.