On the eve of World Book Day, the 2023 Blade Book Award Honor Ceremony hosted by New Weekly was held in Shanghai. The theme of this year's Blade Book Award is "Floating Light and Eternity", hoping to provide people with constant value in the era of liquid flow.
It is reported that the Blade Book Award is sponsored by New Weekly, a subsidiary of Southern Media, and has been established for three times, becoming an influential and insightful publishing award in China. The 2023 Blade Book Award invites Bi Feiyu, a well-known writer and winner of the Mao Dun Literature Award, to serve as the chairman of the promotion committee, and jointly select 15 good books of Blade with members of the promotion committee and special guests, as well as 14 individual honors such as "Tribute of the Year", "Poet of the Year", "Young Novelist of the Year", "Scholar of the Year", "Translator of the Year" and "Non-fiction Author of the Year".
What is Blade?
As early as 2002, New Weekly launched a special feature entitled "In Search of China's Blade", aiming to find a group of up-and-coming figures who influenced China at the beginning of the century. The Blade Book Award also continues this quest for new talent.
At the scene of this year's honor ceremony, Bi Feiyu, Chen Luyu, Zhang Li, Chen Ying, Li Binbin, Zhu Yujie, Zhi'an, Zhou Lian, Yang Qingxiang, Lu Dapeng and other members attended.
Bi Feiyu expounded on the significance of the Blade Book Award on the spot: "How to evaluate a list or a literary award? What is our foothold? In the end, we summed up two things: first, academic, and second, to favor young people, young writers, and encourage young people. That is our basic position. ”
At the ceremony, the young authors brought their insights into their fields. Wang Xiaowei, one of the winners of the "Scholar of the Year", mentioned in his speech that today's daily life of Chinese has been filled with large and small screens, and he added up the area of all electronic screens in his home, and that number reached 15 square meters, accounting for 12.636% of his own housing area. People pay too much attention to the distance through the screen, but ignore their own near and daily life. In his work "The Depths of Everyday Life", Wang Xiaowei attempts to bring people back to their daily lives today to counter the impact of screens and related technologies on today's lives.
Book designer Zhu Yingchun won the honor of "Designer of the Year" for the design of the book "Tofu". With the theme of "Return to Nature, Return to Everyday Life", he took the readers to review the design process of "Tofu", and also shared the sentences and essays written by Yi Yang Qianxi, Hu Ge, Ma Boyong, Jin Yucheng, Zhi'an, Yu Qian, Ma Weidu, Liu Liangcheng, Chen Luyu and others for "Tofu".
The blade is not only sharp, but also calm. Chen Shangjun, a senior professor of liberal arts at Fudan University and an expert in Tang poetry research, was awarded the honor of "Annual Tribute". With accurate research and a long academic spirit, he carried out a detailed and comprehensive inventory of the poetry documents of the five dynasties of the Tang Dynasty, and strived to restore the true appearance of Tang poetry.
Chen Shangjun said: "I feel very fortunate that in the course of more than 40 years of academic research, the times are constantly changing, and the conditions and environment for academic research are constantly changing. The work I used to do and the things I couldn't think of can now be achieved and done, and I myself feel the change in the atmosphere of the times. ”
Sun Bo, president of New Weekly Magazine, explained the original intention of the establishment of the Blade Book Award and the spirit contained in it: "We want to continue to look for: what kind of books and what kind of ideas can continue to give us strength, can make us more courageous to face the real world, can look into the future with more confidence, and can spend our lives more calmly? Based on this pursuit, the Blade Book Award has always been on the road of discovering good books." ”
"Blade Book of the Year 2023" is one of the most watched awards. At the ceremony, 15 good books were announced, namely: "Winter of Literature", "Tower of Babel", "Should I Go", "Night Walk in Spring Mountain", "Image and Eros", "The Paradox of Law", "Too Platinum Star is a Little Annoying", "Old Friends, Lovers and Big Trouble", "Turning Familiarity into Strangeness", "Between the Sea of People", "The King's Game", "Salt Town", "Sleep", "Why There Are Libraries in the World" and "Ge".
It is worth mentioning that this year's Blade Book Award will also invite the editors of the award-winning books to the stage. In the process of the birth of a book, the editor's vision for finding the topic, finding the path of the author, and the countless subsequent meticulous editing are also worthy of being seen and remembered.
It is understood that the 3rd Blade Book Award will be comprehensively upgraded on the basis of the previous editions, and will jointly interpret the new "Blade Culture Season" in the form of book awards, salons and screenings.
On April 12, the "Blade 24 Frames" screening was held. With the theme of "Survival and Life: Women's Everyday Epics", the screening featured three women's micro-documentaries produced by New Weekly, and organized a dialogue with the director of New Weekly with Zhang Li, Qi Jinnian, and Zhu Yujie after the screening.
On April 14th, the "Blade Salon" with the theme of "Bright Dialogue" was held as scheduled, and "New Weekly" prepared three dialogues: "Shanghai Outside the Taxi Window: A Tale of Two Cities by an Ordinary Man", "All Things Are Animistic and Beautiful: When We Observe Nature", and "From Sound to Words, the Scenery in Their 'Grid'", which extended the connotation of the Blade Culture Season.
At the end of the Blade Book Award Honor Ceremony, it was announced that the theme of the next Blade Book Award will be "Magnificent Ordinary". We have a lot to look forward to in how the Blade Book Awards will interpret this theme next year.