National Book Prize and Terramaxka Prize – Applications

Applications for the National Book Prize 2018 are open. Applications are also open for Terramaxka – The National Book Prize for Children and Adolescents. As always, the applications are for books published the year before and are open to all local publications in English or Maltese, given the books fall under one of the accepted categories of the Prize. The Prize awards the authors of those publications that are judged to have high literary and cultural or academic merit, according to the criteria associated with the category.

Submissions are to reach the National Book Council by 13 April 2018, together with a completed application form and four copies of the submitted book or books. It is important that the applicant indicates the right category for each submission. There are a total of seven categories: Novel, Short Story, Poetry, Drama, Translation, General Research, and Biographical and Historiographic Research.

Each category is allowed more than one prize so long as the books submitted exceed the 90% mark. This ensures that low-quality work does not get awarded if it is even slightly better than the rest. In fact, it can happen that no winner is chosen for a given category if the required standard is not achieved by any of the entries in that category.  An independent board, appointed specifically and solely for the purpose of adjudicating the Prize, will evaluate the submissions according to a set of criteria. These, along with the applications and regulations, can be downloaded from the National Book Prize page on this site.

This year all authors who are awarded the National Book Prize, including the prize for Best Emergent Author and the Lifetime Achievement Award, will receive a monetary prize of €2,000, which is double the amount that has been allocated until now. The winner in the category of novels will also receive funding from the Arts Council for the translation of their work.

Applications with four copies of the submitted books must be sent by post or delivered by hand to Mr Joseph Debattista at the following address:

National Book Council

c/o Central Public Library

Professor Joseph J. Mangion Street

Floriana FRN 1800

[add_posts category=book-prize-en show=100]