Posted on July 2, 2018 at 11:00 AM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek

A group of Swedish cultural figures plans to hand out an alternative Nobel Prize for Literature this fall.

The New Academy — comprising writers, actors, journalists among others — will dissolve December 11, the day after it has formally given its award, according to The Guardian.

The New Academy is inviting all of Sweden’s librarians to nominate authors who have written at least two books, one of which was published in the last ten years. 

A public vote will follow these nominations, with the four highest vote-getters being put before the New Academy’s jury.

They are specifically seeking a writer who has told the story of “humans in the world,” reports The Guardian, in contrast to the Nobel Prize, which seeks “the most outstanding work in an ideal direction.”

The Swedish Academy, which administers the Nobel Prize, announced in May that it would not give out a literature prize this year, following a rape-allegation scandal.

It is expected to award two prizes for literature in 2019 instead.

In late 2017, eighteen women told a Swedish newspaper that photographer Jean-Claude Arnault had sexually harassed them, and last month, he was charged with two counts of rape.

Arnault’s wife, poet and writer Katarina Frostenson, was on the Nobel committee.

The academy voted to keep Frostenson on the committee in spite of the claims made against her husband, but she later resigned.

Some of Arnault’s original accusers also claimed that some of the harassment occurred at properties owned by the Swedish Academy.

Categories: Today in Books

Tagged As: Awards, Scandal

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