Here are the finalists of the IX Edition of the Silent Book Contest 2022 – Gianni De Conno Award!
After the great success of the VIII edition of the Prize, the Silent Book Contest has restarted with its IX edition.
The organizing committee sees
Carthusia Edizioni as the now consolidated organizer and leader of the
SBC, flanked by important partners such as the
Bologna Children's Book Fair, the
Turin International Book Fair, the
Municipality of Mulazzo and the
Montereggio Paese dei Librai Association,
IOB International Organization of Book Towns,
Centro per il Libro e la Lettura, and
IBBY Italia, who shared this extraordinary journey with us again this year.
The IX Edition of the Silent Book Contest – Gianni De Conno Award, which ended on February 20th 2022, had 250 unpublished works from 44 countries and different territories: Argentina, Belgium, Belarus, Brasil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Columbia, Croatia, Estonia, Philippines, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Japan, Greece, Hong Kong, India, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Perù, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, UK, Czech Republic, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Spain, Sri Lanka, USA, South Korea, Sweden, Taiwan, Turkey, Ukraine, Hungary.
The International Jury, chaired by Walter Fochesato (expert of children's literature and history of illustration – Italy) and composed of Emanuela Bussolati (illustrator – Italy), Eros Miari (member of the editorial board of the Turin International Book Fair – Italy), Soojin Kwak (winner of the Silent Book Contest 2019 – South Korea), Elena Pasoli (director of the Bologna Children's Book Fair – Italy), Sonja Riva (writer and journalist of CSR – Switzerland), Sara Wang (CEO of Sidee Cultural Communication - China), Javier Zabala (illustrator – Spain), Patrizia Zerbi (publisher of Carthusia Edizioni – Italy) has selected 14
unpublished finalist projects with the support of Costanza De Conno of the SBC Organizing Secretariat.
The 14 finalist projects are:
• “A floresta” by Irena Freitas (Brazil)
• “Aport!” by Anna-Marie Kohutovà (Czech Republic)
• “Beyond the stars” by Eya Mordyakova (Russia)
• “Il fiume infinito” by Nadia Romero Marchesini (Argentina)
• “Il ragazzo nel dipinto” by Dario Maximiliano Moreno (Argentina)
• “Lost in porcelaind” by Katerina Illnerova (Czech Republic)
• “Missing Leg” by Irene Frigo (Italy)
• “My little human” by Anastasiia Temborska (Ukraine)
• “Sireno” by Dina Perez (Argentina)
• “Spark” by Yedda Chen (Taiwan)
• “Teseo y el Minotauro” by Raphael Ampuero (Belgium)
• “The Boat and Whale” by Meinn Yang (Taiwan)
• “The last leaf” by Oleksandr Shatokhin (Ukraine)
• “Unbreakable friends” by Marto Kelbl (Czech Republic)
On 21st March 2022 at 16.00, at the “illustrator’s café” of the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, there was the presentation event of the 14 finalists of the contest with the participation of the jury and some partners of the competition, and the opening of the physical exhibition at the fair with all the finalists. Always by 25ft March 2022, our Virtual Exhibition of the 14 finalists SBC 2022 was active and visitable via link on the website www.silentbookcontest.com and also accessible from the Carthusia website www.carthusiaedizioni.it and partner’s websites.
Lately, in mid-May, the Award Ceremony of the winning book of SBC 2022 will take place at the Turin International Book Fair in the “presence” of the Jury and the Author / Illustrator with the official delivery of the printed volume.
The next step will be the live exhibition of the 14 finalists, at the end of August in Montereggio di Mulazzo, in the deconsecrated church of Sant’Apollinare. The exhibition is organized by Carthusia Edizioni in collaboration with the Municipality of Mulazzo, and the presentation in the town square will see the participation by Patrizia Zerbi, publisher and editorial director of Carthusia, together with some members of the competition jury
The winning book of the Junior 2022 section will be proclaimed in a dedicated event in December 2022 and published by Carthusia in January 2023 in its series dedicated to the competition, and all classes involved in the Jury will be given, thanks to the support of BPER Banca, all the titles of the “Silent Book” series already published, to start building a small class library dedicated to “silent books”.
Since 2018 the Silent Book Contest is dedicated to Gianni De Conno, its ideator and creator. An artist of great impact, one of the greatest illustrators of the Italian publishing scene, in which he operated a dense dreamlike vein sustained by an inclination to hyperrealism, a magical and surrealism, a sort of profoundly original creative oxymoron. Gianni De Conno was also a true “Grandmaster”, he illustrated and interpreted the world, he taught with passion and care, in this little and small editorial world, he made a lot of other extraordinary things in his work.
