Literature Prize competition 2003: Polish authors invited
More than 900 authors submitted entries to the contest. The Nigerian writer Kalu Opki won the prize in the category 'Radio Narrative'. Eltayeb Emadi from Sudan took top honors in the category 'Radio Play'.
The Indian subcontinent
The second contest followed in 1987 and was aimed at authors on the Indian subcontinent. The awards were presented at the Frankfurt Book Fair to Nirmali Hettiarachchi from Colombo (Sri Lanka) and Dinesh Satyal from Kathmandu (Nepal).
The Soviet Union
The most impressive contest outcome was registered at the 1991 competition which invited authors from what was still the Soviet Union to submit their entries. The roughly 1,700 manuscripts received bore witness to the historic changes occurring there. Martin Walser, a recipient of the German Book Industry's Peace Prize chaired the jury. The Russian, Eva Lissina, took first prize in the radio narrative category, while Olga Kovbazyuk of Ukraine won in the category for radio plays. A selection of 19 entries for the Literature Prize were published in the book "A Crust of Bread".
The Arab world
The 1993 contest for the Arab world also culminated in the publication of a book. DW received 1,095 entries, from which 17 were chosen to appear in a bilingual German-Arabic edition entitled "Fatima's Dreams". Top honors went to the Syrian writer Riyad Ismat in the radio play category and to Zalwa Bakr of Egypt in the narrative category.
Mexico
In 1995, 416 authors took part in the Literature Prize contest for Mexico. The entries submitted reflected the political and social circumstances of the country. Gabriela Riveros won first prize for her narrative, while José Conceptión Flores Arce convinced the jury with the radio play he submitted in both Spanish and the Nahuatl Indio language. A selection of entries appeared in book form under the title "Chili & Salt".
The Turkish language
The next year, in 1996, the DW Literature Prize focused on the Turkish language. The jury ended up judging 831 entries from 22 countries. Of these, 698 (84 percent) were submitted from Turkey. Ten percent came from Germany. Three-quarters of all entries were narratives and the rest radio plays. About one-third of the entries were written by women and the same percentage of authors as a whole were under 30 years of age.
Chinese-speaking authors
The 6th edition of the DW Literature Prize contest, in 2000, was aimed at Chinese-speaking authors. Some 1,200 entries were submitted - and not just from the People's Republic and Taiwan. Listeners of the DW-RADIO Chinese Service from other regions and countries also participated; for example, from the United States as well as eastern and western Europe. Hans-Dietrich Genscher, the former German foreign minister, was the patron for that year's competition. The awards were presented on June 7, 2001 in Beijing. Top honors went to Wang Jianping, a writer and bank employee in Beijing, for his radio narrative "Old Garbage". The script editor, screenplay author and university lecturer Cui Zi'en, also from Beijing, took the jury's second prize for his narrative "The Earthly Existence of My Uncle".