Joyce Carol Oates has accepted the Mermaid Award

Joyce Carol Oates was honored at this year’s Book Fair with the very first Mermaid Award, established by the Book Fair in celebration of its fortieth event. Oates received this accolade for her poignant literary works that have deeply and meaningfully resonated with Swedish readers.

The honorary award winner received a unique, hand-carved statuette from Oskar Ekström, the Program Director of the Book Fair. The statuette, shaped like a mermaid, was carved by sculptor Panos Mamakos. The choice of symbol reflects the Book Fair’s mermaid, which is also featured as an illustration in the first printed book in Swedish.

The award ceremony was followed by an honorary prize seminar, where Joyce Carol Oates was interviewed by Swedish author Karolina Ramqvist. During a touching conversation about literature and writing, Ramqvist asked how it feels for a multi-award-winning author to receive this prize:

– This is the first [award] that is so exquisite – a kind of abstract mermaid: the essence of a mermaid rather than a literal one, as in H.C. Andersen’s tale. This is more like the spirit of a mermaid: an individual who happens to be a woman but is really a spiritual being, said Joyce Carol Oates.

The rationale for the honorary award reads in full: “She is a literary heavyweight whose impressive body of work over six decades has challenged us with questions of violence, sexuality, ethnicity, and family. Her portrayals of American dreams and nightmares serve as a universal mapping of the modern human’s social problems and neuroses. At the same time, her most significant works contain the sometimes-overlooked ingredients that once made the old classics worth reading: they are entertaining stories with stylishly crafted drive. The Mermaid 2024 is awarded to one of the greatest authors of our time – Joyce Carol Oates.”

Joyce Carol Oates, born in 1938 in New York State, is one of the most prominent authors in the U.S. She has distinguished herself as one of the leading figures in contemporary American literature and has received several awards, including the National Humanities Medal, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, and the PEN/Malamud Award.

The Mermaid Award is presented in collaboration with Arctic Paper.