Bachmann Prize 2023 goes to Valeria Gordeev

Her text “ER PUTZT” convinced the jury, she had been among the favorites since her reading on Thursday. The literature award, endowed with 25,000 euros, was awarded for the first time this year using a new voting system.

The Deutschlandfunk Prize (12,500 euros) went to Anna Felnhofer, born in Vienna in 1984, who read her text “Fische fang” in the ORF theater. The Polish-German author Martin Piekar received the Kelag Prize (10,000 euros). After the first vote by the jury, he was level with the Swiss Laura Leupi, who was born in 1996, with eleven points, but then prevailed in the runoff. Leupi received the 3sat prize worth 7,500 euros.

In addition to these prizes, which were awarded by a seven-person jury, there was the BKS Bank Public Prize (7,000 euros plus a town clerk’s grant), for which voting was possible online on Saturday afternoon. Martin Piekar also won it for his text “Talking to walls/Poles are difficult people”.

After the cancellation of Helena Adler and Robert Prosser, twelve authors had been on the jury since Thursday, which decided in a new voting mode with points. Each jury member awarded five points to one point, except for their own candidates. The voting result was added up, the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize went to Gordeev, who achieved the highest number of points with 19 points. The other prizes – with the exception of the audience prize – were awarded analogously to the majority of points. Felnhofer narrowly missed out on the main prize with 18 points.

Gordeev was also awarded a newly created sculpture for the first time in 2023. The sculpture, weighing 2.3 kilograms, was created by the sculptor Helmut Machhammer and is nicknamed “Inge”.