The Story of My Cowardice (2021/22)

In November 2021, Litera.hu and the Blinken OSA Archivum launched a joint venture called “The Story of My Cowardice”, which included an open and invitational literary competition, the publication of interviews and podcasts on the topic, and a social game on Litera's social media pages. 284 entries arrived to the open call, all of which are available on Litera’s call page. Two juries were set up: the Invitational competition was judged by a student jury and the Open competition by a professional jury.

About the Project

Everyone has a story from his or her life—a story that has been kept silent until now—that is now seen as cowardice: a time when unwise or even justified fear overcame the desire to speak the truth and do the right thing. One finds excuses, justifications, in many cases with the affirming assistance of one's environment. One theorizes in defense of one's own silence and helplessness, one lulls oneself into lies. But there are moments when we have to confront self-deception. This would be one of them.

The invitation only call

Litera has invited ten contemporary writers to submit their personal stories of cowardice in a narrative of around 8-10,000 characters. The submissions, which will be available to read on Litera from this week, will be judged by a student jury in the Litera Prize tradition.

The invited writers were: ESZTER BABARCZY, ZSÓFIA BÁN, IMRE BARTÓK, LÁSZLÓ DARVASI, VIRÁG EARTH, ÁKOS GYŐRFFY, JÁNOS HÁY, SÁNDOR JÁSZBERÉNYI, ERZSÉBET TÓTH and TIBOR ZALÁN.

The student jury was: Bálint Buday (Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Budapest); Bálint Csabay-Tóth (University of Szeged); Zsófia Németh (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest); Noémi Uraky (University of Miskolc); Andrea Urbán (University of Debrecen)

The open call

In parallel, Litera has also launched an open call for submissions. The competition was open to anyone, regardless of their literary background, who wanted to tell their personal story of cowardice in a short short story of 3-5 thousand characters. Submissions were judged by a professional jury after a pre-screening by the editors, and the best entries were published in Litera.

The jury was: Katalin Dobó editor (Blinken OSA Archivum); Renátó Fehér poet, writer; András Greff Editor (Litera); Viktória Radics critic; Dávid Szél psychologist

The winners and the award ceremony

The winner of the 2022 Litera Prize, and the winner of the invitation only call was Győrffy Ákos.

284 entries were submitted to the open call. The winner was Zsolt Bajnai, the second and third prizes went to Eszter Imre and Gabriella Kiss respectively.

The presentation of this year’s Litera Prize and the prizes for the best entries in the open competition took place at a public awards ceremony on 16 March 2022 at 18:00 at the Blinken OSA Archivum. The event was held in conjunction with the opening of the Fearless exhibition in the Archivum. The joint exhibition of the Archivum and the Freeszfe Association presented the ancient roots and recent examples of honest, straightforward, truthful speech and stance.