Literary prizes in 2025

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 2025.

• Laura Pignatti’s Italian translation of ‘Lowi’ by Stefaan Boonen won the Premio Andersen. According to the jury, they received the price “for sharp writing, effective in its simplicity, capable of giving voice and strength to the thoughts of a protagonist on the run and in search of herself. For a poetic and powerful novel, which does not shy away from the telling uncomfortable truths, supported by a translation attentive to the right sounds and equally witty illustrations."
• What We Have Left by Aline Sax won De Boon for Children’s and Youth Literature 2025, the most prestigious Flemish prize for the best Dutch-language books. According to the jury: “Aline Sax offers a poignant impression of Berlin in the twilight of the Second World War, seen from the perspective of the defeated – a viewpoint rarely explored in youth literature. And what's more, it is written in free verse, a form that is quite unique in Dutch-language young adult fiction. This is a novel that does not shy away from brutality, yet resilience and an authentic voice take centre stage.”
• The Big Chicken Book by Evelien De Vlieger & Jan Hamstra received De Boon Readers' Prize for Children's and Youth Literature 2025.

• Christine Bais' German translation of Weird Hair by Nico Boon was named one of the three laureates of the 27th Dutch-German Children's and Youth Playwriting Prize, which is awarded annually during the KAAS&KAPPES festival.

• Gaea Schoeters received the Ultima for Literature 2024. "With the award, the jury honours an author whose work touches on important themes: from existential questions about life and death to current issues around inequality, identity and feminism. The jury also praises her exceptional versatility and deep commitment: there is always something at stake. Her literary work just gains strength through her commitment, which she consistently and fervently deploys on various cultural fronts."
• I’m Going to the Sheep by Marieke De Maré received the Confituur Bookstores' Prize 2025. "This little gem is at once accessible and special, at once prose and poetry, at once down-to-earth and philosophical, at once text and white space, at once Flemish and universal."
• W. by Tiemen Hiemstra won the Inktaap Prize 2025. The winner of the Inktaap is selected by young people aged 15 to 18, who choose between three nominated titles that they have read, discussed, and judged. According to the jury: "We felt connected to the main character because he resembled us. (...) Of all three nominations, the theme in this story came closest to our lived world. And that made us want to read on."
• Aleksandr Skorobogatov received the KU Leuven honorary medal from the Faculty of Arts. It is an acknowledgement of his exceptional service to society: his sharp analyses of the Russian war approach and the Western indifference have received a lot of praise. “His prose is a unique illustration of the importance of translation in the circulation of literary texts, crossing the boundaries of cultures, countries and languages,” says professor Pieter Boulogne, one of the nominators of the honorary medal.

• ‘In Another Life’ by Bart Moeyaert received the Henriëtte de Beaufort Prize 2025. The annual Flemish and Dutch prize is awarded to a biography written in Dutch, alternating between a Dutch and a Flemish author.
• 'The Lives of Claus' by Mark Schaevers received De Boon Readers' Prize for Fiction & Nonfiction 2025.
• Bart Van Loo received De Gouden Ganzenveer 2025, a cultural prize awarded annually to someone who has made a significant contribution to the Dutch written language or language culture. "Bart Van Loo has a varied body of work with his love for French cultural history in all its facets as a common thread. He receives De Gouden Ganzenveer 2025 for his detailed mining of history and the multifaceted and infectious way he conveys it to a very wide audience."

• ‘The Shame Species’ by Paul Demets won the Grand Poetry Prize 2025, one of the most prestigious poetry prizes in the Dutch-speaking world. "The collection strikes at the fragility of being human in relation to nature, to animals. The particularly poetic sense of nature of the late poet Guido Gezelle is rediscovered in ‘The Shame Species’. One could say that we undergo a pleasant (poetic) contamination, as it were."
• ‘Decem’ by Anne Provoost won the audience award of the Grand Poetry Prize 2025. “Provoost's poetry is more than a form; it is an essential need to capture the layeredness of the subject matter and its fragmentary nature within a framework that does justice to the intensity and movingness of the overwhelming - something the jury initially thought could not be captured in a framework at all. There is much that can be made poetic, but with ‘Decem’, it feels like it should be poetic.”