Presentation of the International Stefan Heym Prize to Joanna Bator
INVITATION for media representatives to the ceremony on Tuesday, 4 April, 6 p.m., at Schauspielhaus Chemnitz and to the press conference beforehand on 4 April, 2 pm at the Chemnitzer Hof
On 4 April 2017, the City of Chemnitz will award the International Stefan Heym Prize for the fourth time in honour of Stefan Heym, the son and honorary citizen of the city. The prizewinner is the writer and publicist Joanna Bator (see press release 599/2016). She will receive the 20,000 euro prize in person in Chemnitz.
We cordially invite representatives of the media to the ceremony, which begins at 6 pm.
The Stefan Heym Prize will be awarded during a ceremony at the Chemnitz Theatre. The laudator will be Marta Kijowska, a Polish journalist who lives in Germany and writes in German and Polish.
The ballet of the Chemnitz Municipal Theatre will present a corresponding performance at the ceremony. Joanna Bator will also sign the Golden Book of the City of Chemnitz.
Before the award ceremony, there will be a press conference with the prizewinner Joanna Bator, the laudator Marta Kijowska, the Chairwoman of the International Stefan Heym Society, Ulrike Uhlig, and the Lord Mayor Barbara Ludwig. Representatives of the media are invited to the "Chemnitzer Hof" at 2 pm.
About the prizewinner:
Joanna Bator, born in 1968, is recognised as an outstanding voice in contemporary European literature. With her texts, which are as idiosyncratic as they are skilfully and subtly narrated, she quietly but resolutely addresses current social issues and phenomena and explores them in their historical depths. Her latest novel "Dark, Almost Night" shows how hatred can destroy a society, how quickly the varnish of human morality can tear when people are confronted with change. Joanna Bator received the Nike, Poland's most important literary prize, for this novel in 2013. This year, the author was shortlisted for the International Literature Prize - House of World Cultures 2016. She has previously published the novels "Sandberg" (2011) and "Wolkenfern" (2013) as well as numerous essays and articles.
Joanna Bator is also the winner of the Spycher: Literature Prize Leuk 2014 and was the holder of the Friedrich Dürrenmatt Guest Professorship for World Literature in Bern in the winter semester 2014/15. In 2015, Joanna Bator lived and worked in Berlin for twelve months as a guest of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Programme. She holds a doctorate in philosophy and is an author and university lecturer who has taught in Warsaw, New York, London and Tokyo, among other places. She spent four years in Japan. Her home is in Poland.
Further information:
Information on the International Stefan Heym Prize of the City of Chemnitz, the Stefan Heym Society, the namesake Stefan Heym (1913-2001), the previous prizewinners and the Stefan Heym Sponsorship Prizes can be found on the website www.stefan-heym-preis.de and at www.chemnitz.de
Note for editors:
Please send confirmation of your participation in the ceremony to the press office of the City of Chemnitz by 29 March:
pressestelle(at)stadt-chemnitz.de, Tel: 0371 488 1531, Fax: 0371 488 1595