1. Who pays the Winner Prize? What does participation in a competition mean?
MECENAT.KZ Annual Literary Prize for the best novel about modern Kazakhstan is an independent project of a group of citizens of Kazakhstan, patriots of the country and literary professionals. The competition was organized by the founder of the initiative, Yerlan Askarbekov, with the expert participation of Pavel Bannikov and Bakhytzhan Kanapyanov on MECENAT.KZ site, where the winner is selected annually. Only First Place is awarded. Further, the winner of the Prize himself concludes an Contract with representatives of the Maecenas, providing the winner with a lifetime annuity for the best novel about modern Kazakhstan.
2. Is it possible that little has been written about Kazakhstan in the XX-XXI centuries? What is the novelty of the task?
The plot of the novel about Kazakhstan is to be developed in the period from 1900 to the present. If the novel is of a historical orientation, then the support for the writer in this case is the historical archives. During this period, Kazakhstanis can count on one hand the large literary works that usually influenced the ideas of entire generations. More about this can be found on the website of the Prize, for which the Executive Secretary of the Board of the Union of Writers of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Honored Worker of the Republic of Kazakhstan Bakhytzhan Kanapyanov and poet, editor Pavel Bannikov prepared texts and videos for potential authors about Kazakh and Russian literature of Kazakhstan, describing the history and development of Kazakhstani authors’ creativity.
3. Is it impossible to buy a jury, or negotiate a win in this competition? What guarantees an honest choice of the winner?
The principle of the Prize is the maximum objectivity and democracy of the decision-making process, a well-protected site. Kazakh readers directly vote for the manuscripts. By registering under their real names, they rate the work of the participants on the project`s site, getting acquainted with all the works online. Absolutely all Kazakhstanis can be readers. Visitors of the site can choose the type of registration – “Reader” and “Participant”. Participants of the competition cannot vote. Voting takes place online. Registrants receive an SMS code to confirm the identity of the voting Reader on the project site, where both the voting readers and the participant leave their data according to the User Agreement and the Public Offer to publish the work. Neither the writer nor the creators of the project can buy the prize, or influence the result in any other way. Only the reader himself chooses and votes for the works presented to the public. Works of authors-citizens of the Republic of Kazakhstan are accepted for participation in the competition for the Prize. Members of the organizing committee, readers, as we have already noted, are not eligible to participate in the competition. The full names of the voting readers are published in the list on the site based on the results of the readers` vote with the permission of the voters themselves, who agreed to disclose these data to ensure transparency of voting when registering.
4. How do you select applications?
The works are moderated before publication (see the Competition Regulations). Readers who pre-check applications are citizens of Kazakhstan working in the following professions: professional literary critics, philologists, editors-in-chief of republican literary publishing houses, or executive secretaries of republican literary journals, literature teachers at major universities in Kazakhstan and the world. Readers check the content of texts in Kazakh and Russian for plagiarism, stylistics of memoirs, an abundance of obscene language, calls to violence and destructive behavior, in accordance with the Competition Regulations. Readers announce all non-anonymous applications not allowed to participate at the monitoring stage (anonymous applications are destroyed) of participants who have violated the Competition Regulations in the form of publishing a list of the names of participants-applicants on the project site.
5. No contacts on the site. How do I contact you?
We have no direct contact on the site, only an option for feedback from the organizing committee and developers. We read everything and will definitely answer requests if the information you requested is not on the MECENAT.KZ site.
6. Why is it difficult to contact you directly?
We deliberately limited the offline communication of Readers and Participants with the organizers of the project and Readers, since all the conditions for submitting applications must be accessible and understandable to both applicants and voters simply through a detailed acquaintance with the project site and the Regulations on MECENAT.KZ Annual Literary Prize for the best novel about modern Kazakhstan.
7. How do I know if the application has been accepted?
After sms-confirmation of the applicant`s full name, your application will be assigned a number that will be displayed as a notification in your personal account on the project site.
8. I understand nothing from your explanations, I want to come to a private meeting with the organizers and members of the jury, explain my position to the readers and the jury.
MECENAT.KZ Annual Literary Prize for the best novel about modern Kazakhstan has no jury. We believe in Reader, who, for his part openly, objectively and responsibly deciding which of the works is worthy of the prize, as well as the potential of the Participants to study the detailed instructions on the project site. Readers only moderate the content before voting on the basis of the Competition Regulations before posting all verified applications on the site. The principle is observed in order to eliminate nepotism, corruption and any examples of deception of both Participants and voting Readers. The organizers restrict communication with the audience only to the possibility of uploading an application and openly voting on the project`s site - our protection, evaluation and personal involvement will not be.
9. Why only one prize? Give at least 10 prizes!
The prize is not considered as an aid to one person, it is annually received by the best work out of all the declared ones. In the future, such gratuitous philanthropic support will benefit the culture as a whole. The most favorite Kazakhstani participant should win. Write! The first among equals has a chance to reach the top of creativity every year. We hope that our idea will be picked up by those who are ready to develop different areas of culture in Kazakhstan and not only. Let there be more such projects!
10. There is nothing unique here, such competitions are held every day!
The unique format of the Prize is built on a few successful historical examples of selfless cooperation of the the personality of a Maecenas and people from the sphere of art. This is Guy Maecenas himself, whose name has become a household name, who supported Horace, Virgil and Ovid, and the “Royal Pension” under Louis XIV. All other scholarships and awards were often awarded to laureates of various competitions and prizes on a one-time basis, not for life, or not annually in the same field of knowledge and culture. Imagine that a young author, inspired by the example of Mukhtar Auezov, who wrote his first strong work “Yenlik-Kebek” at the age of 19, will live after receiving the Prize for another 60 years, he will receive 360 thousand dollars - this automatically makes the Prize provided by our Maecenas of the fifth world`s largest awards.
11. Why can`t non-citizens of Kazakhstan participate?
We believe in the attractiveness of large local literary works for foreign readers, in the potential for our authors to be published by the best foreign publishing houses and “thick” magazines. The goals of the Prize are the development and introduction of Kazakh literature to the world literary space by identifying social ideals in modern Kazakh literature, stimulating literary creativity among local authors, searching for new vectors of cultural development, new directions of intercultural interaction. It is important to reveal the creative potential of the interaction of cultures of different nationalities inhabiting Kazakhstan. The preference for the large prose form was also given due to the fact that the novel is the most socially significant form of existence of modern literature. The organizers emphasize that the search for new and enrichment of traditional forms of literature, the combination of deep philosophy with the popularity and attractiveness of the work is very important for the general reader from Kazakhstan.
12. What about the co-authors?
Only one author can apply for the Prize. The prize is awarded annually to only one work in the state language or Russian.
13. I published my novel 10-15 years ago and I want it to participate in the competition.
Only previously unpublished works can apply for life annuity. But, do not despair, before the readers` vote starts from the day of the announcement of the competition, you have 150 days to write your new novel, finish the draft, or you can try your luck next year with a new novel. So go ahead!
14. I want to make a beautiful gesture: defiantly refuse the Prize.
The winner is the one whose work received the maximum votes of Kazakhstanis. He or she, registering on the site, accepts an Offer Contract that with gratitude and understanding accepts the Prize, participates in the closing ceremony of the competition, a master class on copyright and accepts the first versions of translations of the work into Russian (if the work is originally in Kazakh), or into Kazakh (if the work is originally in Russian). Otherwise, it is impossible to submit an application for participation in the competition.
15. Who is behind you? Whose money does the winner get?
The prize is allocated from personal funds by the Maecenas, whose personality will be presented to the public and literary critics, if more than 500 entries are typed on the MECENAT.KZ site. Neither the organizers of the project, nor the Maecenas himself set themselves the task of making publicity on the image of a person who supported the idea of developing Kazakhstani culture. The guarantor in receiving a lifetime pension for the Winner is the annuity drawn up in the name of the recipient of the Prize by representatives of the Maecenas and the personal guarantee of the members of the organizing committee of the Prize:
16. What will happen if further the Maecenas refuses to finance the project?
The project is not directly linked to the personality of the donor, the selection of the best work is independent of him. Nevertheless, the Prize will be awarded annually to the laureates who apply on the project site, as well as to the winners in the form of annuity for life on a monthly basis based on an insurance guarantee issued by representatives of the Maecenas of the Winner.
17. What if the recipient of the award lives over 100 years?
He can boast of excellent health, and we hope that the Prize will definitely contribute to the improvement of the quality of life and creativity of such a happy long-term resident.
18. Yes, by what right do non-literary readers evaluate works?
The Prize combines a deep philosophical approach with the popularity and attractiveness of the works for the general reader. Interaction of cultures from 1900 to 2021 contributed to the fact that our friendly and multinational people are currently showing the so-called “Kazakh phenomenon” - a boom in world culture. The new novel also aims to provide hope. Therefore, who, no matter how directly voting Kazakhstani Reader, is able to assess the degree of influence of modern creativity on the public worldview? In bookstores, market relations to popularity in literature are dictated by the purchased circulations, and in the case of the Prize, these are the votes of the Voted Readers donated to the works. At the stage of determining the method of registration on the site, everyone has the right to choose their status for voting. Writers who decide to apply for the Prize cannot vote for themselves and each other, while independent writers who have chosen the “Reader” status cast their votes on the works they like on the same basis as an ordinary Reader. We hope that there will be no less professional assessments than public ones. Everything is in your hands, colleagues, the choice is yours!
19. I do not want to participate, but I am a writer with a name and I think I deserve a prize.
As they say, the main thing is participation! And the strongest will win. The conditions for receiving the Prize can be found on the project site; they must be completed in full so that your application can be counted.
20. I am a writer with a name. Why do I need to participate?
The prize is a lifetime annuity to ensure the creative independence of the writer. Participation is based on high standards of Kazakh and Russian, the most thorough literary professionalism in composition, style, elaboration and reliability of artistic details. The works will give readers hope, escape from despair, an opportunity for the writer to search for new and enrichment of traditional forms of creativity. The period from 1900 to the present time taken as a basis contributes to the disclosure of the creative potential of the interaction of cultures of different nationalities inhabiting Kazakhstan. The name of the writer and his work will undoubtedly make the work attractive to foreign readers. The project, with the preservation of royalties and the ability to attract maximum attention to his person and work, gives both the author with a name and new stars the potential for replication in the best foreign publishing houses and magazines, opportunities for further film adaptation.
21. What will happen to the prize lifetime pension after the death of the laureates?
Lifetime pension payments to laureates are automatically terminated after the death of the Winner and are not inherited.
22. Why would someone receive an award at an early age, and someone already in old age?
Literary luck comes to everyone in different ways. Arthur Rimbaud at the age of 18 already stopped writing and traveled around the world until 1880, engaged in trade, and the Nobel Prize laureate Maurice Maeterlinck came to literary creation only after fifty. But each of them was happy about the freedom to write.
23. Is the work censored for admission to the competition?
Maximum objectivity and democratic decision-making is the main principle of independent readers who check the content of applications in Kazakh and Russian for plagiarism, an abundance of obscene language, violation of current legislation, in accordance with the Competition Regulations.
24. What if the person who received the award never writes anything worthwhile again?
Well, it happens, but we hope that the Prize will give the best of the best hope and freedom to continue to create always and even in spite of.
25. How is your project different from ordinary charity?
The Maecenas of the project is a private person who contributes on a voluntary and gratuitous basis to the development of our "literary-centric" culture. The Maecenas in no way influences the selection of winners and the content of works written by writers now and in the future. The name of the site of the Prize comes from the Latin common noun Mecenat - the historical person of the noble Roman Maecenas (Gaius Cilnius Maecenas - lat.), who was the Maecenas of the arts under the Emperor Augustus. Historians believe that the activities of Lorenzo Medici during the Renaissance, as well as Maria Mancini during the time of King Louis XIV of the Sun, combined the principle of charity with the constant small support of the best of the best people in their field from the creative world. Consequently, Maecenasage differs from other types of charity by investing money in general welfare and interest in one or another direction of culture, in particular, in the development and introduction of Kazakh fiction to the world literary space by identifying social ideals in modern Kazakh literature, stimulating literary creativity, searching new vectors of cultural development, new areas of intercultural interaction. Thanks to this project, Kazakhstani writers have another tool for the effective and rapid development of society.
26. What does “a piece of large-scale prose” mean in your mind?
The selection criteria are:
27. What is the fate of the text of the winner?
After the Prize has been awarded, the fate of the work is in the hands of the author. The winner accepts the first versions of translations of the work into Russian (if it was originally in Kazakh), or into Kazakh (if it was originally in Russian), and a master class on copyright is held. Further, we hope for the potential of the winning work for publication in Kazakhstan and abroad, film adaptation - we intend to contribute to this in every possible way.
28. What if the potential 1st Prize Winner gets the most Reader votes at the 2nd Annual Prize? Can the winning laureate count on multiple awards in a row?
The laureate has the right to participate in the competition only once. Further, the Winner has the right to choose only the status of the Reader on the site and, on a general basis, participate in voting for new works submitted to the competition.
29. And if I did not receive an award in the first year, can I participate again? How many works can I submit at the same time?
Yes, Participants can apply an unlimited number of times, but only one best work per year. If you have a lot of already written works that you have not published anywhere else, you can submit them in turn, waiting for the announcement of the next competition.
30. It seems dishonest to me that so little time is allotted for the competition - it is impossible to write a serious work in 150 days.
High-quality fiction is not something random - it is the result of a planned action, a well-thought-out storyline that authors have been nursing for years. Most likely, the Prize will simply serve as a motivation specifically for serious writers to structure their working hours and submit work within the specified period, chosen by us based on the experience of experts and careful immersion in the analysis of the work of professional writers.
31. How was the selection of readers, topics and keywords to be moderated? What happens to the applications that are not accepted for any reason?
A council of attracted literary and technical experts has participated and continues to advise the project on these and other key issues. On our YouTube channel, you can also read the recommendations of opinion leaders in the field of literature during the entire project. Readers, on the other hand, announce all applications not allowed to participate at the monitoring stage (anonymous applications and memoirs are deleted) of the Participants who violated the Competition Regulations in the form of publishing a list of the names of the applicant participants on the project site.
32. Why is the plot chosen within the period from 1900 to the present?
These 120 years are very conditionally divided into six generations of authors of 20 years of creative youth (i.e., which does not always coincide with biological youth) and reveal the period where the great Kazakh literature may still have to experience its revival:
The plot must be within the period from 1900 to the present, any time period of any length within this period.
33. Why a novel of at least 80 pages? What genre can I write it in?
The preference for the large prose form was given due to the fact that the classical novel is the most socially significant form of existence of modern literature. You can write any work - childish, youthful, adult, poetry, historical, fantastic, etc. - a work of unlimited length, which you then upload to the project server in one file.
34. Why should a project be attractive to a foreign reader, according to the organizers, given that only citizens of Kazakhstan can take part in the voting?
Many students and literary critics are studying Kazakh oral folk art, written literature and see a big gap in the historical time period from 1900 to the present day. Despite the fact that there may be huge temporal and geographical spaces between us, the fates of the heroes of cultural works of this or that nation reflect the reality of different levels of modern culture, which has long been striving for globalization. So, both the personification of common images, and the linguistic features of the mixture of cultures and languages in the post-Soviet space in Kazakhstan, allow our and foreign readers to find the roots of their worries, hope for the future, fill in the historical gaps in understanding Central Asian culture on the territory of modern Kazakhstan, the ninth in the world by the geographic size of the republic.
35. I have an idea, but there is no way to implement it yet. Can “Maecenas” help in this matter?
Maecenasage differs from other types of charity by investing money in the general welfare and being interested in one or another direction of culture. Maecenasage is not targeted assistance. If a Maecenas decides to provide a scholarship or grant to a specific person, he does not regard this as helping one person. So if your novel hasn`t been written yet, you can try applying for next year. Good luck!
36. What happens to the works after the winner of the Prize is announced?
Manuscripts of novels and stories in electronic form (Microsoft Word format, at least 80 pages) are not reviewed or returned, they are uploaded to the server directly by the applicant in full, and then, after moderation, are posted on the site on the day the voting starts. On May 15, 2021, on the day of the announcement of the winner of the Prize, all competitive works from the MECENAT.KZ site will be deleted. New applications will be reviewed and uploaded to the site from the start of the next annual competition. Applications are stored on the project server only during the competition period, and then deleted. The further fate of the work is entirely in the hands of its author. Information about the winning author will be published on the page about future Winners, and all interested publishers and readers can freely familiarize themselves with it online at any time.
37. How is the project going to address copyright issues?
The Prize project is non-commercial. Manuscripts of authors are not reviewed and returned by the organizers of the project. After the announcement of the Winner, we will organize a lecture on copyright for him. In the user agreement on the site, Readers agree not to reproduce publicly available works of participants. During registration, participants agree to a public offer to transfer their work to our readers, which, after moderation, will be publicly available for review and reader voting.
38. Who reserves the right to copyright royalties if they win?
By submitting applications, the contestants agree to participate in events for the media, agree to the first edition in case of victory, the royalties remain with them.
39. Why exactly this amount?
The capital allocated for each winner of the Annual Prize for the Best Novel about Kazakhstan is already actually the fifth largest prize fund in the world after the most prestigious and largest award - the Nobel Prize in Literature, as well as the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
40. What if the book had not been published at the time of the application, but would be released before the results are announced?
Do other competitions and festivals in the world allow this? Of course not. It is better for you, of course, to participate with us, if you have a very large talent and high chances of getting into the top. The point is that there will be interest to the top 20 or top 30 from TV and film producers and publishers from the Republic of Kazakhstan, Russia and other countries. We want top 20 or top 30 writers to sign contract to publish or film. And these companies need unpublished works all the more.
41. What is the principle of determining a published or unpublished work?
Now there is a huge variety of resources available on the Internet: chats, forums, instant messengers, a variety of social networks, self-publication sites, electronic publishing houses and online magazines, online portals, etc.
We look at all of this, etc. libraries. And for them, as before, the presence of an ISBN or ISSN is critical. If you have published a novel in a paper or electronic magazine that has an ISSN, then this work cannot participate.
42. Why will the works be published anonymously during the voting?
We are hiding the names of authors whose works are displayed entirely to voters and casual readers due to possible trolling. Authors whose bad phrases are going to be bullied by a few moral freaks can be very upset. Not all people are so brave, strong and young to calmly withstand such persecution, even if it comes from some stupid, unfortunate anonymous person. Someone may even get sick from idiotic bullying. We will purposefully introduce publishers and producers to the authors of the most popular novels who will enter the top 20 or even the top 30. And the rest of the authors must be protected. We have tried to think about various possible situations.
43. What does it mean to “give hope”, as written in the Regulation?
They asked several times about the “hope” in the Regulations. It`s just that at least not a black finale was in the form of “well, they all died, and you, the reader, let`s stop living”. We are NOT talking about fanfare and glorification that “all the countries of the world envy us.” This is complete stupidity and tastelessness, and it is a shame to attribute this to us, the Maecenas and partners. “The orchestra played carcasses” is vulgar, but gallows humour in the spirit of cinema of 90-93 is also vulgar.
Ask yourself - what gives you, you personally, hope for the future? At least something - at least an atom, at least a quantum. And let this be your personal option.
44. So can I write a political novel?
You are welcome! But not mentioning the Presidents of the Republic of Kazakhstan and call for violence and overthrow. Otherwise, the work will not be allowed to vote. I.e. writing about politics should be CULTURALLY - without hysteria, extremism, with thoughts, and not just negative emotions. This, alas, very many in the modern intelligentsia cannot even imagine. We are talking about novels, not journalism on social networks, not a political science or historical monograph.
45. I don not like your terms. What to do?
Great! Do not participate in this competition, participate in another, do not write novels at all, or create your own contests.
