WORTMELDUNGEN-Literaturpreis 2022: Shortlist nominations for Valerie Fritsch and Deniz Utlu

WORTMELDUNGEN – The Crespo Foundation’s Literary Award for Critical Short Texts honours excellent literary positions that draw attention to current social injustices. The aim is to promote critical voices, but also to broaden the public discourse. The WORDMELDUNGEN-Literaturpreis will be awarded for the fifth time in 2022. Last year's winner was Suhrkamp author Marion Poschmann.

The interdisciplinary jury has nominated five titles for the shortlist for the following reasons: »While the public is constantly learning about new locations of ongoing crises and catastrophes, literature traces the upheavals of our time in places that tend to receive little attention. In it, a sense of disruption, dystopian fantasies, but also the longing for successful moments in life take on a tangible form. The five texts that the jury of the WORDMELDUNGEN-Literaturpreis 2022 has included in its shortlist bear witness to this. [...]«

Suhrkamp author Valerie Fritsch (Winters Garten (2015), Herzklappen von Johnson & Johnson (2020)) has been nominated for her text »Die Dame mit dem Zuckerfuß«, about which the jury states:

»We don’t know much about the characters in Valerie Fritsch’s intense narrative; nevertheless, we get very close to them. The story captures the readers’ imagination and thus pulls them into the very precisely described existence of the geriatric nurse Agata, her patients and relatives. Valerie Fritsch succeeds in creating a moving, kitsch-free interior view of a world that is perceived almost exclusively in economic terms in the public discourse.«

Deniz Utlu, whose work Gegen Morgen Suhrkamp published in 2019, is chosen for his short story »Der unsichtbare Hafen«. The jury states that:

»In a literary tracking shot of the Port of Hamburg, Deniz Utlu tells a somewhat different story of migration. His great skill is the atmospheric condensation of the very place in which his own father arrived in Germany 59 years ago by ship and with but a few hopes. Image by image, the reader is taken on a journey through modernised working worlds and into the past. Deniz Utlu’s text, in whose precise sentences the greater political contexts continually resonate, is the literary search for a father.«

The WORDMELDUNGEN-Literaturpreis is endowed with 35,000 Euros, and the shortlist nominees are awarded 3,500 Euros each for their placement. The winner will be announced in June 2022.