NORMAN, Okla. (May 7, 2019) –World Literature Today, the University of Oklahoma’s award-winning magazine of international literature and culture, announced today that it is increasing the amount for the NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature to $35,000.
Established in 2003 by Nancy Barcelo, Susan Neustadt Schwartz, and Kathy Neustadt, the prize is awarded every other year to a living writer dedicated to having a positive impact on the quality of children’s and young-adult literature.
Kathy Neustadt sees the award increase as an important step to bringing the prestige of the NSK Prize into parity with mainstream awards. She commented that people need to treat “children’s and young adult literature as important in their own right, which they are!”
The Neustadt Prize website also is being relaunched to celebrate the fifty-year anniversary of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature begun in 1969 (neustadtprize.org).
The redesigned website will have improved readability on all digital devices and new content allowing readers, students, and educators to engage with the Neustadt and NSK prizes in greater depth.
Visitors will discover interesting details about the prizes’ storied history and delightful anecdotes about their laureates.
The site’s newly-launched Education Network provides free downloads of teaching curricula focused on Neustadt and NSK Prize winning authors.
A jury of children’s and young adult writers, illustrators, and scholars nominate the candidates for the NSK Prize. The jury also selects the winner in a process that WLT Executive Director Robert Con Davis-Undiano describes as an “exciting adventure in which the best writers and scholars in the world praise and advocate for their own writer heroes.”
The 2019 NSK Prize will go to Margarita Engle, Cuban-American author of many verse novels, during the Neustadt Lit Fest October 15-17, 2019 at the University of Oklahoma.
Past winners include Mildred Taylor (2003), Brian Doyle (2005), Katherine Paterson (2007), Vera B. Williams (2009), Virginia Euwer Wolff (2011), Naomi Shihab Nye (2013), Meshack Asare (2015), and Marilyn Nelson (2017).
About the NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature
The NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature is a $35,000 prize awarded biennially to a living writer or illustrator with a significant impact on children’s or young-adult literature. A jury of children’s literature authors nominates candidates and selects the winner. Made possible through the generosity of Nancy Barcelo, Susan Neustadt Schwartz, and Kathy Neustadt, and sponsored by World Literature Today, the NSK Prize celebrates literature that contributes to the quality of children’s lives.
About the Neustadt International Prize for Literature
The Neustadt International Prize for Literature is a $50,000 prize funded by a generous endowment from the Neustadt family. Each laureate is chosen by a jury of writers that World Literature Today convenes on the University of Oklahoma campus. They choose the winner solely on the basis of literary merit. The Neustadt Prize is the first international literary award of its scope to originate in the United States and is one of the few international prizes for which poets, novelists, and playwrights are equally eligible.
About World Literature Today Founded in 1927, World Literature Today is the University of Oklahoma’s award-winning magazine of international literature and culture. Serving the international, state, and university communities by achieving excellence as a literary publication, a sponsor of literary prizes, and a cultural center for students, WLT is in its tenth decade of continuous publication. It has been recognized by Bustle as the “absolute best international literature and culture magazine out there” and was recently called “an excellent source of writings from around the globe by authors who write as if their lives depend on it” (Utne Reader).
