On 209 Submissions for 2019 AlMultaqa Prize for the Arabic Short Story

AlMultaqa Prize for the Arabic Short Story has announced details about the judges and submissions they have received for their fourth annual prize:

According to organizers, 209 eligible collections were submitted to the prize, with the most (80) coming from Egypt. The entries came from a total of 22 countries, which also included Saudi Arabia (19), Iraq (18), Syria (14), Morocco (12), Jordan (10) 7, Yemen (6), UAE (5), Oman (4), Kuwait (4), Libya (2) and Iran, Sudan, Lebanon, France, Ukraine, Belgium, the USA, and Canada.

The 2019 jury is made up of Spanish translator-scholar Luis Miguel Perez Canada, who is the chair of judges; Egyptian academic Said Al-Wakil; Jordanian author Rami Abu Shehab; Moroccan critic Abdel Razzaq Al-Mesbahi; and Kuwaiti novelist Basima al-Enezi.

The 2019 longlist is set to be announced at the beginning of October, the shortlist at the beginning of November, and the winner at the beginning of December.

The prize has had three winners thus far: Mazen Maarouf’s Jokes for the Gunmen, which made the 2019 Man Booker International longlist in Jonathan Wright’s translation, Shahla Ujayli’s Bed of the King’s Daughter, and DIaa Jubaili’s No Windmills in Basra. One of the stories from No Windmills appears in the Winter/Spring 2019 issue of ArabLit Quarterly, in Yasmeen Hanoosh’s translation.