SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, 11 May. (EUROPE PRESS) –
The writer Daniel Hernández, for his work ‘Department of Magical Affairs’, has won the 2022 Azagal Prize awarded by the Cabildo de Tenerife from the Education and Youth area. The jury, made up of 160 young readers from 25 educational centers throughout the island, decided on the youth literature award after a meeting with the three finalist authors of this contest, which is celebrating its sixth edition.
The Azagal Prize is a project to train readers and promote the reading habit aimed at young people in Secondary Education. This award was created within the programs to promote reading (PIALTE) carried out by the Cabildo. Azagal is the pseudonym of Juan Manuel Trujillo Torres (Santa Cruz de Tenerife, 1907 – Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 1976), Canarian essayist, editor and printer, an exceptional promoter of Canarian culture between the stage of the historical avant-gardes and the period of postwar period.
The Minister of Education and Youth, Concepción Rivero, explained that yesterday, Tuesday, the components of the 25 groups, 160 students and 20 teachers, met at TEA with the three finalist writers for the Azagal Prize: Rosa Huerta, with ‘La hija del Escritor ‘; Gabriel Sánchez García Pardo, for ‘The Silent Apprentice’, and Daniel Hernández Chambers, who won with the work ‘Department of Magical Affairs’.
Through this project, the students, after reading the works, participate in a meeting with the three authors of the works, with whom they exchange impressions and cast a vote to choose the work to which they want the award to be granted.
The Azagal Promoter Group is made up of fifteen people including young people who have participated in the Reading Committees, three currently, and adults related to youth reading, such as writers, editors, teachers or, for example, educators.
The insular director of Education and Youth, Isabel Bello, highlighted “the great reception and active participation of the young people involved in this project to promote reading, students who carry out important reflections, demonstrate a great capacity for critical vision and analysis.”
The objectives of the Azagal Prize and the related activities are, mainly, to train young readers with a critical sense and to give tools to new writers and give them a voice by making them a jury for a literary prize; generate spaces for debate and reflection in which young people can share their ideas about narrative, writing, literature and values, and promote a space where young writers can show their texts.
