I-Newswire.com (press release)
June 24 2005

IWP Veteran Orhan Pamuk Wins Prestigious German Peace Prize

Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk, a veteran of the University of Iowa
International Writing Program (IWP), has been selected to receive the
prestigious Peace Prize awarded by the Association of German
Publishers and Booksellers.

i-Newswire, – The award, which includes a cash prize of 25,000 Euros,
will be presented this October at the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Announcing its decision, the prize jury praised Pamuk for a unique
ability to bridge cultures. “In Orhan Pamuk, we are honouring an
author who like no other writer of our time, explores the historical
footprints of the West in the East and the East in the West,” it
said.

“He is committed to a concept of culture based on knowledge and
respect for others. Pamuk has created a genre in which Europe and
Islamic Turkey co-exist.”

IWP Director Christopher Merrill commented, “”Orhan Pamuk is a world
treasure. And his latest award is an emblem both of his extraordinary
literary powers and of the largeness of his vision. He is indeed a
peacemaker — a writer whose every word deepens our understanding of
the human condition.”

Pamuk, who lives in Istanbul, is Turkey’s best-selling author, and is
known internationally for novels including “My Name is Red”, “The New
Life”, “The White Castle” “The Black Book” and, most recently,
“Snow.”

He wrote part of a novel when he was in residence at the UI in the
fall semester of 1985. He returned to Iowa City in 1998 to read on
the “Live from Prairie Lights” series, broadcast on UI radio station
WSUI.

An Agency France Presse wire story noted, “Pamuk is no stranger to
political controversy. Earlier this year, he angered nationalists in
Turkey by publicly addressing the highly sensitive subject of the
massacre of Armenians in World War I. In an interview with a Swiss
newspaper, he said that ‘30,000 Kurds and one million Armenians were
killed in Turkey.’ One local official ordered the seizure and
destruction of his works.”

The Peace Prize, one of the highest distinctions in German
literature, presented each year at the close of the book fair in
Frankfurt.

In 2003 Pamuk won the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, whose cash prize
is second only to the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Founded in 1967, the IWP ( ) was the first
international writers’ residency at a university, and it remains
unique in world literature. The IWP brings established writers of
the world to the UI, where they become part of the lively literary
community on campus. Over the years, more than a thousand writers
from more than 120 countries have completed extended residencies in
the program. Most IWP residency groups are a mix of poets, fiction
writers, screenwriters, playwrights, journalists, essayists and
critics.

The importance of the IWP to international understanding was
recognized as early as 1976, when former senator, diplomat and UN
Ambassador Averrill Harriman nominated founders Paul and Hualing Nieh
Engle for the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1995 the program was honored with
the Governor’s Award for distinguished service to the State of Iowa.

The IWP is staffed and housed by the University of Iowa. IWP writers
have been financed by the United States State Department, through
bilateral agreements with numerous countries; by grants given by
cultural institutions and governments abroad; and by private funds
that are donated by a variety of American corporations, foundations
and individuals.

IWP director, poet and essayist Christopher Merrill is a faculty
member in the UI English department, and the international literature
commentator for the syndicated radio program “The World.”

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STORY SOURCE: University of Iowa Arts Center Relations, 300 Plaza
Centre One, Suite 351, Iowa City, IA 52242-2500.