The Lotte Scholarship Foundation has selected 24 winners of the 3rd Shin Kyuk-ho Charlotte Literary Awards.
The foundation said on the 28th that it held the awards ceremony on the 27th at the Lotte Retail Academy in Seoul’s Yeongdeungpo District, with about 80 people attending, including Chairwoman Chang Hye-sun, head of the judging panel Chung Kyung-ryang, and the winners and their families. The Shin Kyuk-ho Charlotte Literary Awards were launched in 2024 to carry on the literary spirit of the late Shin Kyuk-ho, honorary chairman of Lotte Group, and to discover new works and writers. Entries are accepted in three categories — poetry, fiction and essay — which are run under the names Pushkin Literature, Goethe Literature and Pi Chyun-deuk Literature.
This year the foundation changed the eligibility rules to accept only works that have not been published in literary magazines or in book form, widening participation beyond established writers to the general public and emerging authors. It also created new Excellence and Encouragement prizes to give opportunities to more writers, raising the number of winners to 24 from nine a year earlier. Helped by those changes, the number of entrants reached about 5,700, roughly double the figure from a year earlier.
The grand prizes went to Kang Woo-geun’s Clouds
The grand prizes went to Kang Woo-geun’s “Clouds” in poetry, Seo Jung-a’s “The Location of the Blank” in fiction, and Lee Seung-joon’s “The Yellow Shroud” in the essay category, each carrying a cash award of 10 million won (about $7,000). In each category, the foundation also selected two Best Prize winners (5 million won each), two Excellence Prize winners (3 million won each) and three Encouragement Prize winners (1 million won each). The winning works were compiled into a single collection and presented at the ceremony.
“The literary award we host may be no more than a small spark, but I hope it helps revitalize the literary world so that the day comes soon when writers can focus on their writing alone,” Chang said in her remarks at the ceremony.
The Lotte Scholarship Foundation also runs the Charlotte Reading and Art Competition, working to spread reading culture among children and teenagers.
#LotteScholarshipFoundation#ShinKyukHo#LiteraryAwards#KoreanLiterature#Lotte
Original reporting by Park Kyung-hoon for Seoul Economic Daily.
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