Irseer Pegasus


Irseer Pegasus is a literary event of the Swabian regional group of the Association of German Writers and the Schwabenakademie Irsee, which takes place annually in January at the Irsee monastery. The authors' meeting promotes encounters and discussion within a workshop of writers from the fields of fiction, poetry. and essay writing. Joint textual discussion and literary discussion, as well as the awarding of a prize for literature, are the highpoints of the meeting.

Eligibility requirements

Authors should be able to demonstrate at least one independent book publication or to present comparable publications. Applications must be submitted by the end of October of the previous year at the latest. A jury evaluates the submitted texts, which must be able to be read in a maximum of 15 minutes.
Jury members are:
Previous jury members included Rainer Jehl, Fritz Reutemann, Eva Leipprand, and Rainer Wochele.

Prices and awards

A special feature of the meeting is the fact that the authors participating in the workshop award one of the two prizes themselves. The following guidelines have applied since 2015: Each participant receives a sheet of paper with the names of the participating authors and can rate his competitors on a scale of 0 to 5. The author who scores the highest receives the prize in the amount of €2000. Evaluation of the scores is done by employees of the Schwabenakademie. A second prize is awarded by the jury, which is also endowed with €2000.
Participation in the workshop and prize competition is possible up to three times, but prizewinners are not eligible to win again. The prize is considered a young talent award and is attentively followed by other literary professionals. Many of the prizewinners went on to receive later other, sometimes more significant prizes, such as the Feldkirch prize or the Dresden Poetry Prize.

Publications

In 2008, an anthology with selected texts from the workshop was issued for the 10th anniversary of the Irseer Pegasus. Luft unter den Flügeln was published by Klöpfer & Meyer and was presented with others at a reading in Bregenz.

Winners