Media24 Books Literary Awards
a set of South African literary prizes awarded annually by Media24
The Media24 Books Literary Awards (known before 2011 as the Via Afrika Awards, and before that as the Nasboek Literary Awards) are a group of five South African literary prizes awarded annually by Media24, the print-media arm of the South African media company Naspers. They are open to authors whose books are published within the Media24 Books stable (previously known as the Via Afrika stable), which includes NB Publishers, Jonathan Ball Publishers, LuxVerbi-BM, NVA, and Van Schaik Publishers. Each award is worth R35 000. The awards comprise:
The W.A. Hofmeyr Prize, a long-established prize for Afrikaans literature;
The Herman Charles Bosman Prize for English literature;
The Recht Malan Prize for non-fiction;
The MER Prizes for illustrated children’s books and youth literature;
The Elisabeth Eybers Prize for poetry.
The Jan Rabie Rapport Prize, for debut works in Afrikaans, was awarded annually at the same awards ceremony as the Media24 prizes from 2004 to 2014, but was open to all South African publishers. The M-Net Literary Awards were also awarded at the same ceremony until 2010.
The 2020 awards were heavily criticised for their lack of diversity. The winners included six white males and one white female, while the 18 judges included of only two people of colour.
W.A. Hofmeyr Prize
The W.A. Hofmeyr Prize is awarded annually for literary excellence in drama, poetry and prose that could "shift the boundaries of Afrikaans literature." It was instituted in 1954 by Nasionale Pers in honour of Afrikaans businessman W.A. Hofmeyr, a former chairman of the company. Originally only books published by Nasionale Boekhandel (NB Publishers) were eligible, but it is now open to all presses within the Media24 stable.
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This entry incorporates text from “Media24 Books Literary Awards” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.