Chapter 567 Generous Bonus
The next morning, Fang Minghua drove Song Tangtang to the train station, accompanied by her secretary Xu Hui.
I went to Yanjing with the crew first, and then gathered the other actors and flew to New York for four months of filming.
After Fang Minghua saw off his wife, he did not go home but drove to the Provincial Writers Association compound. When he arrived at the jury office, he saw Wang Zi.
"Teacher Fang, you are back from a business trip to Xiangjiang." Wang Zi greeted him quickly when he saw him.
Perhaps it was during work that she was too embarrassed to call Fang Minghua uncle anymore and call her teacher like Li Hongying.
Fang Minghua nodded: "Are you used to coming here?"
"It's good. Sister Hongying takes special care of me." The girl said happily.
Fang Minghua didn’t say anything. He took out the Gartonley strawberry-flavored hard candies he bought from Xiangjiang and placed a small bag in each office. Everyone ate them happily.
Zhang Yanqian is specifically responsible for the work of the jury office, so she took the initiative to report to him on the recent work progress.
"Under the arrangement of Teacher Lu Yao, we have sent a call for articles to the People's Daily and Guangming Daily, which will be published on August 1."
"Ta Kung Pao in Xiangjiang and Taiwan Where is the United Daily News? "
Fang Minghua asked again.
“Reply receipts have also come, and Ta Kung Pao and United Daily News will publish them on August 1.”
“In addition, Teacher Li Li from San Francisco also sent a fax, saying We have already contacted the New York Times and the Times in the UK, and they will publish our call for papers, and the Yomiuri Shimbun in Japan has also sent us a fax.”
Fang Minghua nodded with satisfaction.
Although it is said to be a Chinese literature award open to the whole world, this is the first time to award an award. From the perspective of funding and feasibility, the stakes should not be too large.
It is enough to call for submissions from the three regions across the Taiwan Strait, as well as from the three countries of the United Kingdom, the United States and Japan. If the results are good, the next step will be to expand the scope of the call for submissions.
"Chairman Fang, this is the list of invitations to be sent to major magazines and publishing houses. Take a look." Zhang Yanqian said, pulling out another piece of information from the drawer and handing it to Fang Minghua.
For selections such as the Mao Dun Literary Award and the original National Award for Outstanding Short and Medium Novels, in addition to simply publishing a message in the newspaper, in the name of the Chinese Writers Association, notices were sent to all provincial Writers Associations to ask them to Recommended works for selection.
Fang Minghua's Chinese Literature Award is under the name of the Qin Provincial Writers' Association. Of course, he cannot send a notice to the Writers' Association of his brother provinces, and he does not want to go through official channels.
In this case, it is better to send invitation letters to major publishing houses in the name of the jury.
"Contemporary", "Harvest" and "Flower City". Sanlian Bookstore in Xiangjiang, Crown Publishing House in Taiwan, etc.
Magazines include "People's Literature", "Wenhui" and "Novel Monthly". There are also "Hong Kong Literature" and Taiwan's "United Literature", which basically include no less than forty or fifty famous literary publications and magazines from the two sides of the Taiwan Strait.
Fang Minghua glanced at it and asked again.
"Have Lu Yao read it?"
"Well, this was drawn up by Lu Yao himself."
"Okay, after the call for papers is published in the newspaper, we will send it to these units Invitation! "
On August 1, two domestic heavyweight newspapers, "People's Daily" and "Guangming Daily", as well as Hong Kong's "Ta Kung Pao", Taiwan's "United Daily News", Japan's "Yomiuri Shimbun" and the United States' "New York Times" 》The British "Times" also published a call for essays: "The call for papers for the first World Chinese Language Awards has officially started!"
Call for papers: January 1, 1990 to December 31, 1991, on both sides of the Taiwan Strait Novels, short stories, essays, poems (collections of poems) published by any magazine in the three places can participate in the selection.
At the same time, during this period, non-Chinese-language literary works published around the world and translated into Chinese within the time specified in the call for submissions can also participate in the award.
The deadline for submission is December 31, 1991, and then enters the selection stage. The list of winners is expected to be announced from April to June of the next year.
The call for papers also details the requirements for the works, the selection rules, the list and resumes of the jury members, the list of reading class members, etc. In particular, the names of the members of the jury are all famous in the literary world.
Of course, what surprises readers even more is the prize money for the winning works.
Prize for winning novel: 100,000 yuan!
Novelette: Eighty Thousand!
Short stories and prose poems (collections) 60,000!
Including shortlisted works (five shortlisted works of each type will also receive a bonus of 5,000 yuan!)
(Winning prizes for non-mainland writers can be converted into US dollars according to the official exchange rate.)
As soon as the bonus amount was announced, both readers and authors immediately became excited!
One hundred thousand yuan for a novel!
You must know that the winning works of the third Mao Dun Literature Award, which was just held, are only 5,000 yuan!
Some people even secretly compare it to the British Man Booker Prize, the highest literary award in the English-speaking world. I heard that the prize money for winning the award is 10,000 pounds, which is only 87,000 RMB according to the exchange rate at the time.
The prize money of the Chinese Literature Prize is completely comparable to the Booker Prize!
The news from the outside world has not yet come back, but mainland writers are the first to get excited. Those who have published novels in the past two years and think they are relatively good have called the magazines or publishing houses urging them to recommend their literary works.
It’s probably not easy to win a prize, but it’s good to be shortlisted.
5,000 yuan is equivalent to the Mao Dun Award.
However, the editor-in-chief of some publications or magazines has encountered difficulties, and the jury office has sent invitation letters to welcome submissions.
However, there is a sentence at the end: It is appropriate to recommend three to five books for each type of work.
Does this encourage recommendations or limit space?
Of course there are some who don’t care about this. There is no stipulation in the letter, so what if I recommend a few more articles? Just pay a little more for postage. Because the Jury Office stipulates that all submitted works must be sent in five copies at one time to facilitate reading and communication among the members of the Jury.
As a result, parcels and letters from various magazines and publishing houses came like a snowflake. The six staff members in the judges’ office had to register and create a book in a day’s work. For this reason, Fang Minghua simply took the laptop given by Stephen Chow Contribute it and let the staff of the jury office use it.
The staff of the judging panel will also conduct a preliminary review to see if the publication time meets the requirements, and then mail it to reading class members distributed across the country.
Fang Minghua is also a member of the reading class.
In addition to him, Qin Sheng also included Lu Yao, Jia Pingwa, Chen Zhongshi, Bai Miao and Wang Yu, editor-in-chief of "Novel Review".
At first some people advised him to become a judge directly, but Fang Minghua declined in the end.
If you organize it yourself, it’s better to keep a low profile, and let those big guys serve as the judging panel.
Fang Minghua’s work started to get busy. Not only as a reading class, he also had to carefully read the submitted works, and write a written evaluation of each work, the advantages and disadvantages of the book, etc., and then wait for next year’s reading class Everyone will conduct a comprehensive evaluation during the discussion.
At the same time, as the person in charge of the jury office, he also has to deal with some specific matters.
For example, today, I suddenly received a call from overseas.
"Teacher Fang, there is a Korean calling you." Wang Zi ran to Fang Minghua's office and said loudly.
"Korean? International student?" Fang Minghua asked.
“No, it’s from South Korea. His Chinese is really difficult to understand.”
From South Korea?
(End of this chapter)