The Bahrain Book Award Organizing committee, at the Ministry of Culture, has announced the launch of the 2014 session of the Bahrain Book Award.

The new session of the Award runs under the title of "The Role of Art in the Advancement of Society", and is dedicated to celebrate Egyptian writers and researchers to be held 15th November in Egypt. The Award will be presented during the Bahrain Cultural Week, to be held in Egypt in mid-November 2014.

The Ministry accepts applications for the award through the Embassy of Bahrain (Consular Section) in Cairo, Egypt. The various nominated literary and scientific works and publications will be evaluated by a jury committee that will select the winners. The Award aims to strengthen the role played by the Kingdom of Bahrain in supporting writers and publishers in the Arab world and in enriching the Arab library with books in various cultural fields. The Bahrain Book Award Jury comprised Dr. Salah Fadhil of Egypt, Ibrahim Buhindi of Bahrain and Ali Harb of Lebanon.

Last year, Dr. Ibrahim Ghuloom won the prize with his book entitled “Distance and Critical Awareness Production: Ahmed Al-Mannai and the New Literary Movement”. The book presents a detailed critical analysis and deep research with regard to Bahraini modern literature through Al-Mannai writings. The writer reviewed the different historical literary developments of Al-Mannai and the latter’s pioneering liberal thinking, which made him a unique literary figure among his generation in Bahrain.

The winning author will receive a prize of $50,000 during the Bahrain Cultural Week that will be held in Cairo early in November. The deadline for receiving nominations will be October 10, 2014. It is worth mentioning that the Bahrain Book Award was launched in 2011 on the occasion of World Book Day.

Writers are entitled to apply for the Award (according to the country selected each year), given that each session of the Award is dedicated to recognize achievement in a certain cultural field that is selected by the Advisory Committee. Applicants should only submit works relevant to the field designated for each session of the Award, and irrelevant works shall not be accepted. Nominated works should be published within the previous two years (from the date of the deadline of accepting nominations), and should not have won any Arab award. The writer should submit a published book written in classical Arabic. Works written in vernacular Arabic or in other languages shall not be accepted. No local dialects or informal language writings will be accepted, only classical Arabic is allowed, and the committee will not accept handwritten or typed machine productions either.

http://www.moc.gov.bh/en/mediacenter/news/2014/October2014/Name,11747,en.html