Worth 15,000 euros

Anton Wildgans Literature Prize goes to Salzburg woman

The writer Laura Freudenthaler will receive the "Literature Prize of Austrian Industry - Anton Wildgans" 2024, sponsored by Austrian industry. The prize, worth 15,000 euros, will be presented by the Secretary General of the Federation of Austrian Industries (IV), Christoph Neumayer, at the House of Industry on October 3, 2024.

The jury justified its selection for this year's award as follows

"Laura Freudenthaler's prose texts, with a relentlessness that is second to none, always take us right into the heart of circles of life that generally elude narrative. In atmospherically dense images, against a latently dark background, they report on processes shrouded in mystery, in the inner world of the characters as well as in the outside world, on impressions and processes that are usually never mentioned in everyday discourse because they are simply taboo. Experiences of powerlessness, traumas that have never been dealt with, repressed memories that otherwise remain shrouded in a cloak of silence are brought out of the various shadows into the light in these texts and left there. No commentary anywhere. What can be seen, however, is what the characters see, what they perceive and fear, what they suffer from, what they struggle with incessantly; and that they are looking for a railing that would allow them to find their way in the world once again and to belong: Captivating reading."

Viennese by choice has won many awards
Born in Salzburg in 1984, Laura Freudenthaler studied German, Philosophy and Gender Studies at the University of Vienna. In 2014, she published her debut short story collection "Der Schädel von Madeleine". For her novel "Die Königin schweigt" (2017; tr: The Queen is Silent), she was awarded the Bremen Literature Prize, and in 2018 it was also named best German-language debut novel at the Festival du premier roman 2018 in Chambéry. For "Geistergeschichte" (2019), her second novel, she received the European Union Prize for Literature and was nominated for the Alpha Prize for Literature. She has published other works in the literary journals "manuskripte", "Lichtungen", "SALZ", "schreibkraft" and "kolik", among others. Laura Freudenthaler lives in Vienna, worked for several years at the Austria Press Agency (APA) and translates from French into German.

She won the 3sat Prize at the 2020 Ingeborg Bachmann Competition for her text "Der heißeste Sommer". In 2021, she was awarded the manuskripte prize for her work. Her book "Arson", published in 2023 and based on motifs from "Der heißeste Sommer", was voted number one on the ORF best list by the jury in October 2023.