The New Academy Memorial Prize in Literature has been launched by the group of more than 100 Swedish writers, actors, journalists and other cultural figures who initially organized in 2018 in response to the Swedish Academy's decision not to award a Nobel Prize in Literature in the wake of a scandal.
Guadeloupean author Maryse Condé was honored in Stockholm last December with the New Academy Prize in Literature--also called the "Alternative Nobel"--after which the New Academy dissolved as originally planned. But last week the organization re-formed and announced the creation of the New Academy Memorial Prize in Literature.
Already dubbed by the Times of London as the "Dead Author Nobel," the prize will honor an esteemed writer who never won the Nobel Prize in Literature, which cannot be given posthumously. That long and distinguished list includes Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, Thomas Hardy, Henry James, Mark Twain, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, and Philip Roth.
The New Academy is inviting Sweden's librarians to nominate authors from any country who, in addition to being dead, "have told the story of humans in the world." Once nominations have been received, the New Academy will launch a public vote, with the top four authors put before a jury for a final decision. --Robert Gray