Based on the instuctions of His Highness Dr. Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qasimi, member of the Supreme Council and Ruler of Sharjah, and in harmony with his efforts to support talented writers in the United Arab Emirates and across the Arab world, the Sharjah Department of Culture, Cultural Affairs Department, is pleased to announce the twenty-seventh edition of the Sharjah Award for Arab Creativity - First Edition. This edition is dedicated to manuscripts prepared for the author's or author's first publication, not previously published, in the following fields:
- Eloquent Poetry (no less than 15 poems).
- Short Story (a collection of no less than 12 stories).
- Novel.
- Theatrical Script.
- Children's Literature, with this edition dedicated to (a collection of stories for children - ages 6 to 8), and the specialization changes each year.
- Literary Criticism, designated this year for the study of (narrative techniques in postmodern novels), and the specialization changes each year.
The Judging Mechanism
- After ensuring that the texts meet the conditions stated in this announcement, the Award Secretariat commits to a committee of experts in each category of the competition to conduct an initial screening of the texts. This screening aims to narrow down the selection to no more than fifty texts in each category, worthy of competing for the prize.
- The selected texts are then entrusted to two arbitrators to choose the winning texts for the top three positions based on agreed-upon critical criteria. In case of their inability to agree on these texts, the texts chosen by each of them are referred to a third, weighted arbitrator to select three winning texts from them. The decision of the weighted arbitrator is final.
- The judging committees justify their selection of the winning texts, providing winners with feedback on their texts, if available, to make necessary adjustments before the printing of these texts.
Participation in the competition is open to both genders, from the United Arab Emirates, other Arab countries, and Arabized writers, under the following condition: