GRINZANE CAVOUR PRIZE

The Castle has also given its name to one of the leading Italian prizes for literature. The “Premio Grinzane Cavour” was founded in 1982 by Giuliano Soria, and is based on an original formula involving student juries. The awards ceremony is held each year in June, in the peerless setting of the Castle courtyard, and over the years its recipients have included writers who have gone on to win the Nobel Prize.

BRIEF NOTES ON THE ACTIVITIES OF THE GRINZANE CAVOUR PRIZE

The “Premio Grinzane Cavour” was established in 1982 with the aim of encouraging young people to read, and of giving them a taste for contemporary fiction.
Over the course of this quarter of a century, the Prize has developed into a fully-fledged cultural foundation at the service of young people, with the original Prize now being joined by a variety of events in fields ranging from literature and cinema, to journalism and material culture.
Activities take place in numerous countries, though they all originate in Piedmont, in particular the historic old castles of Costigliole d’Asti, Grinzane Cavour, Magliano Alfieri and Cortanze.
The hub of the Grinzane’s activities remains the prize of the same name, however. Literary critics, essayists, writers, journalists and personalities from the world of Italian culture are joined in assessing the books in the competition by two hundred and fifty students representing eleven high schools in Italy and thirteen abroad. One of the objectives of the Grinzane is, in fact, to put younger readers at the centre of creative and cultural processes through their choices, in the knowledge that the greatest raison d’être a literature prize can have is the “creation of new readers”. Over the years the attention of the public has been drawn to African literature through the awarding of the Prize to Amos Tutuola and Ben Okri, and above-all to Wole Soyinka and Nadine Gordimer before they achieved international success by winning the Nobel Prize, as has also been the case with the writers José Saramago, Günter Grass, Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul and J. M. Coetzee. Most recently, the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992, Rigoberta Menchú, was recognized on occasion of the Prize’s twenty-fifth anniversary in 2006.
The Grinzane Cavour Prize does not only entail the selection and awarding of prizes to the works under review, however; it acts as an out-and-out cultural foundation, with a variety of activities taking place throughout the year.
In particular, the meetings and round tables with writers, critics and cultural operators dedicated each year to topical themes on the literary scene have become an integral part of the organization. Conferences are also organized in the foreign cities in which the Grinzane is present with student juries (Paris, New York, Salamanca, Buenos Aires, Tokyo, Prague…), providing a further service for young people and on behalf of Italian literature abroad.
These events abroad are accompanied by a series of awards: the “Grinzane Cavour-Havana Prize”, the “Grinzane Cavour-Montevideo Prize”, the “Grinzane Cavour-Moscow Prize”, the “Grinzane Cavour-Hermitage Prize”, the “Grinzane France Prize”.
Other awards in Italy are: the “Junior Grinzane Prize”, the “Hanbury Botanical Gardens Grinzane Prize”, the “Francesco Biamonti Grinzane Prize”, the “Cesare Pavese Grinzane Prize”, the “Mountain Civilization Grinzane Prize”, and the “Alba Pompeia Grinzane Cavour Prize”.
The organization dedicates itself extensively and intensively to the world of young people and schools through various competitions: “Writing a newspaper”, “Writing news, communicating news”, “Writing the future of Turin”, “Writing the wine landscape”, “Writing the oil landscape”.
“Rai-Grinzane”, on the other hand, is an innovative project which focuses on the creation of workshops in which young high school and university students have the opportunity to analyze national television programmes and the medium itself.
The “Grinzane-Cinema” Festival meanwhile is inspired by the seventh art, dedicated as it is to the links between cinema and literature.
Finally, music, theatre and dance take centre stage during the “Grinzane Festival”.