05.01.22

Salford Digital Curation Lab Director wins Malta’s 2021 national book prize

Categories: School of Arts, Media and Creative Technology

University of Salford’s Digital Curation Lab Director has been awarded Malta’s 2021 National Book Prize, for a literary non-fiction book he co-wrote with EU Literature Prize Winner.

Dr Toni Sant, Digital Curation Lab Director at the University of Salford, was the winner of the literary non-fiction category at Malta’s 2021 National Book Prize. This was for the book Jien-Noti-Jien: Ħsejjes u Stejjer, that he co-wrote with EU Literature Prize Winner, Immanuel Mifsud.

Jien-Noti-Jien: Ħsejjes u Stejjer, was published by Klabb Kotba Maltin and contains 68 Facebook posts which they wrote during the first Covid-19 lockdown in 2020. It shares autobiographical anecdotes and music which has been the soundtrack of both authors lives since their childhood.

Over summer the entire book was read by the authors on Campus FM, the University of Malta's national radio station. These audio recordings are now available on demand for free through Mixcloud.

The ceremony for the 2021 National Book Prize took place on the 10th of December at Auberge de Castille, the Office of the Prime Minister. The winning books were selected by independent adjudication panels from a shortlist of 46 publications, across various categories, that had been published in the preceding year.

The annual ceremony is presented by the National Book Council to celebrate literary and research publishing in Malta. However, this year’s ceremony also celebrated the 50th anniversary of the National Book Prize, after it was first awarded in 1971.

The National Book Council’s Executive Chairperson Mark Camilleri noted in his opening speech: “Despite the challenges which the previous year brought on the local book industry, the number of publications produced in 2020 was heartening.”

Dr Sant had another book published in 2020, which was also shortlisted for Malta’s National Book Prize in the General Research category in this round. The other book is called The Spazju Kreattiv Art Collection and it was published by Fondazzjoni Kreattività.

You can find a copy of the bookJien-Noti-Jien: Ħsejjes u Stejjer, here https://www.midseabooks.com/shop/language-literature/jien-noti-jien

For all press office enquiries please email communications@salford.ac.uk.