MOE Creative Writing Awards 2006 Prize Presentation Ceremony

There are talents in each and every generation! Winning works of the MOE Creative Writing Awards 2006 were announced. The heated competition of countless excellent works displayed the fruitful results in creative writing. The prize presentation ceremony held in the afternoon on November 17 (Friday) in the hall on 5F of the Ministry of Education (MOE) was presided on by Education Minister TU Cheng-sheng in person to eulogize the distinctive performance of winners and to express appreciation to the judging panel and crew for their efforts.

In addition to encouraging writers at home and abroad to engage in creative writing and providing a corner for young students and the public to present their works on a regular basis, the aim of the MOE Creative Writing Awards is to promote literature and art appreciation to the society and to provide incentive for writers to keep writing. When the Awards were founded in 1981, it has since been considered as an important event to writers at home and abroad [over the past 26 years]. Nowadays it is the oldest government awards for creative writing.

Minister Tu pointed out in the opening address, that it was difficult for students and teachers to present their works when most literary awards were designed for the public. The MOE thus modified the entry regulations of the Awards by eliminating public participations, i.e. only teachers and students are qualified for participating in the event, in hopes to encourage students to write at different stages of growth and to prepare them for writing better works in the future through learning from competitions.

According to Minister Tu, though most participants of the present event were college students, many senior high school students also joined the contest. Through creative writing, they have developed good language mastery, mature thoughts and outstanding sensibility. Participants expressed impressive feelings and touching emotions in their works. The education of vernacular literature should be promoted with continual efforts in order to cultivate more potential writers, added the minister.

The new entry regulations to limit participants to only teachers and students were approved and announced for implementation as of 1 January 2006. According to the new entry regulations, categories of the MOE Creative Writing Awards 2006 included teachers’ team: Drama, Short Story, Prose, Modern Poetry, Classical Poetry and Musical Work for teachers; and students’ team: Drama, Prose, Poetry and Musical Works for students. Of the total of 701 works, 61 works from 61 participants won the awards in respective categories.

With this event, the MOE hoped to discover and encourage more teachers and students to depict different aspects in the daily life and to share their remarkable works by exploiting their deft in writing (writing skills). In addition to offering winners a stage to share their honors, every scene was novel from the prelude through the interludes to the finale, hoping to mark out the spirit of creative writing and to interpret the winning works more appropriately.