Romanian writer Claudiu M. Florian is among the 12 winners of this year’s European Union Prize for Literature, an award that recognises the best new and emerging authors in Europe.

The Romanian was awarded for his book Varstele Jocului. Strada Cetatii (The Ages of the Game – Citadel Street), published by local publishing house Cartea Romaneasca in 2012.

The other winners are Tanja Stupar-Trifunović from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Belgian Christophe Van Gerrewey, Antonis Georgiou from Cyprus, Bjørn Rasmussen from Denmark, Estonia’s Paavo Matsin, Selja Ahava from Finland, Nenad Joldeski from the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia), German Benedict Wells, Luxembourg’s Gast Groeber, Jasmin B. Frelih from Slovenia, and Spanish Jesús Carrasco.

Claudiu M. Florian was born in Rupea, Brasov county, in 1969. He got a degree in German Studies from the Bucharest University in 1994, and an MA in Humanistic Interdisciplinary Studies in the German Language at Bucharest University in 1996. He then went on to obtain another MA in Contemporary History from Bielefeld University in Germany.

In 2002, he started working as an employee of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and then moved on to become Cultural and Press Attaché at the Romanian Embassy in Berlin, where he worked from 2004 until 2009. Sine 2010, he has been working at the Romanian Embassy in Bern, Switzerland.

The European Union Prize for Literature is open to the countries participating in Creative Europe, the EU funding programme for the cultural and creative sectors 2014-2020. Each winner gets a prize of EUR 5,000 and benefits from extra promotion and international visibility at Europe's major book fairs, including Frankfurt, London, and Paris. Moreover, the publishers are encouraged to apply for EU funding to have the winning books translated into other languages to reach new readers.

This year, the winners will receive their awards during a ceremony to be organized at Concert Noble in Brussels on May 31.

The European Union Prize for Literature is organised by the European and International Booksellers Federation, the European Writers' Council, and the Federation of European Publishers, with the support of the European Commission.

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Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com

(Photo source: Euprizeliterature.eu)