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Copyright © 1958 Lithuanian Students Association, Inc. June, 1958  Vol. 4, No. 2 Managing Editor P. V. Vygantas

LITERARY PRIZES IN 1958

In order to further literary activity, several Lithuanian organizations have instituted cash prizes for deserving works of literature. These prizes are awarded during the first half of each year to works of prose and poetry, either published or in manuscript.

One of the best known of these literary awards is the prize given by the cultural magazine "Aidai' ("Echoes"), which this year went to tile young author Albinas Baranauskas for his collection of shsrt stories Sniego Platumos . .(The Fields of Snow), published in London in 1955. The author was born in Lithuania and now lives in Waterbury, Conn. An avid linguist, he has taught himself some ten languages and thus has had access to much of the world's great literature in the original. Through prodigious and select reading, he has developed a highly cultivated literary taste, and this is apparent in this prize-winning work. Sniego Platumos is his only published collection to date. The work is in the form of tales narrated by an eld man in a lonely shack to an audience of village men. The ancient story-teller describes with subtle humor the people and events of a small town and of the farms that surround it.

Gražina Tulauskaite-Baraus— kienė was the recipient of a prize given by the Lithuanian Writers Guild; it was awarded her for her collection of poetry Rugsėjo Žvaigždės (The Stars of September). The author is a teacher by profession; for many years she taught the Lithuanian language and Lithuanian literature in several high schools in Lithuania. Tu-lauskaite-Babrauskiene published her first poems in 1924; she has published four volumes of poetry in all, including the prize-winning work.

A third award winner was Marius Katiliškis, who received an occasional prize given by the Lithuanian Encyclopedia for his novel Miškais Ateina Ruduo (Autumn Comes Through the Forests).

The prize was presented at a literary evening in Chicago on March 30. The author is a well-known literary figure who has a number of excellently received prose works to his credit. The prize-winning novel describes a summer in a Lithuanian village isolated by dense forests. It is a long book dealing with the lives of perhaps a dozen people and with the unusual events that occurred in the village. Katiliškis was born in 1905 and published his first stories in 1932.

Two other authors, Alfonsas Vambutas and Jeronimas Ignato-nis, also received prizes, the first for a collection of legends and tales for young people and the second for his novel Ir Nevesk Mus j Pagundą (And Lead Us Not into Temptation).