Literary prizes in 2024

All year round authors and illustrators from Flanders win literary prizes, both at home and abroad. Find out which authors, illustrators and translators have won prizes in 2024.

• Rolf Erdorf won an oeuvre prize for his translations at the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis. Rolf has been a full-time translator since 1989, specialising in children's and young adult books. He has translated about 200 picture books, children's books and young adult books into German, including titles by Flemish authors such as Michael de Cock, Jan de Leeuw, Marita de Sterck and Leo Timmers.
• Olga Amagliani's Italian translation of ‘Ironhead’ by Jean-Claude van Rijckeghem won the Premio Andersen.
• ‘What We Have Left’ by Aline Sax won the first Young Adult Jury Prize at Druk literary festival in Leuven. The prize awards the best original Dutch-language novel for 15+ from 2022 and 2023.
• ‘Later When I’m Big’ by Bette Westera and Mattias De Leeuw in a translation by Laura Watkinson was awarded by the American Library Association as Bachelder honor book.
• ‘Just Look!’ by Elvis Peeters and Sebastiaan Van Doninck received the audience award of the Boon 2024.
• Catherine Tron-Mulder's French translation of Koen Van Biesen's ‘Shut That Door’ won the Prix de l' album surréaliste.

• Tom Lanoye is awarded the 2024 Grand Prize for Literature, a prestigious triennial award recognising authors of significant literary contributions in the Dutch language area.

• Marieke De Maré receives the F. Bordewijk Prize for prose for her novel I’m Going to the Sheep. “The jury believes that with this poetic work, De Maré shows how literature can unite extremes. The novel speaks powerfully about people who are mainly silent, is both light-footed and heavy, and both painfully recognisable and utterly alienating.”

• Lisa Mensing, translator Dutch-German, receives the Straelener Translation Prize, the prestigious literature prize of the NRW Art Foundation for 'Birkenschwester', her German translation of 'Lijn van wee en wens' by Caro Van Thuyne.

• ‘W.’ by Tiemen Hiemstra wins the Anton Wachter Prize, which awards the best debut novel every two years. "With the novel 'W.', Tiemen Hiemstra wrote an extraordinary, appealing and wonderful story around a friendship."

• Author, columnist and opinion maker Aya Sabi was awarded the Ultima for Emerging Talent. From the jury report: "She is a force for good that cannot be underestimated and stands for connection in an increasingly divided society."
• Elvis Peeters, pseudonym of writing duo Nicole Van Bael and Jos Verlooy, was awarded the Ultima for Literature. From the jury report: "The jury praises Elvis Peeters’ approach: always modest and with a consistently high quality. The Ultima Letteren may count as the crowning of a beautiful and rich oeuvre."
• Emmanuelle Tardif's French translation of Lize Spit's ‘I'm Not Here’ won the Prix de l'Auteur Belge Club, an award from the Club bookshops for the best Belgian novel of 2023.
• Alexander Skorobogatov received the 74th Ark Prize of the Free Word. He receives the prize because he ‘continuously denounces the lack of compassion and democratic consciousness in the dictatorships of his native country and of the Soviet Union,’ the jury said.

• Beatrice by Joris Mertens received the Premio Banda Dibujada for best fiction for young audiences published in Argentina by a foreign author in 2022-2203. The prize is awarded by the non-profit organization Banda Dibujada, which promotes comics among children and young people.
• Brecht Evens wins the Bronze Adhemar, the most important prize for comics creators in Flanders. The jury awards Brecht Evens "for his impressive, unique and genius oeuvre, for his capital influence on a new generation of comics creators and for the international influence he has also brought down on Flemish comics".
• ‘Galapagos’ by Michaël Olbrechts wins the Fnac Comics Prize 2024.

• Disability by Anaïs Van Ertvelde receives the J. Greshoff Prize for essay. According to the jury: “The book makes us look differently at disability; not a limitation, but a liberation. The author revises the language we inherited to talk about bodies. And with that language she changes our thinking.”
• ‘A Different Life’ by Bart Moeyaert has been declared the BruutTAAL Rainbow Book of 2024, winning the prize for the best book from the lgbtq+ spectrum. He receives a cash prize of 1,000 euros and a month of free advertising for his book on Tzum and Bazarow.
• Anne-Laure Vignaux's French translation of ‘The Book of Daniel’ by Chris de Stoop received two awards in France:
  • Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger 2023 
  • Prix Polar et Justice
• ‘Pride’ by Martha Claeys won the Socrates Cup 2024. According to the jury, her book ‘stays very close to everyday life and discusses an emotion that affects every one of us’.

• Miriam Van hee receives the 2024 Prize for Mastery from the Society of Dutch Literature. This lifetime achievement award, established in 1920, is awarded once every five years. "The Fine Arts Commission is unanimous in its decision to nominate poet Miriam Van hee for the Prize for Mastery on the grounds of her lifelong dedication to poetry, the sensitive refinement of the poems and the systematic deepening of themes such as transience, melancholy, movement versus stasis, themes and motifs to which she gives shape in each of her collections."
• ‘Zabriskie’ by Peter Verhelst won the Great Poetry Prize 2024, one of the most important poetry prizes in the Dutch-speaking world. The collection is the final part of a trilogy, which began with ‘Zon’ (2019) and ‘2050’ (2021).
• ‘Anchor Cross Heart’ by Sofie Verdoodt won the audience award of the Great Poetry Prize 2024.
• Miriam Van hee received the Prix Max Jacob ‘etranger’ 2024 for ‘Entre bord et quai’. Philippe Noble translated poems from ‘As if we were summoned somewhere’ for that collection.
• Annemarie Estor received the 2024 Frederick Turner Prize for Poetry.