To Antonio Fian, Engelbert Obernosterer, Gustav Janus and Anna Baar is Axel Karner the fifth writer from Carinthia to be awarded the Humbert Fink Prize, awarded by the provincial capital of Klagenfurt. The EUR 12,000 prize is awarded every two years to authors who publish in German and/or Slovenian. Mayor Christian Scheider and cultural advisor Franz Petritz presented the certificate and heartily congratulated the winner on this special award.
Many texts in the Carinthian dialect
An expert jury, this time consisting of Josef Winkler and Antonio Fian, who nominated Karner for the prize “because of his consistent literary work, his mastery of linguistic reduction and his stubborn insistence that literature should be more than mere entertainment”. Many of his texts are written in the Carinthian dialect, but according to the jury they are not dealing with dialect poetry in a purely regional sense.
Who is Axel Karner?
Axel Karner was born in Zlan in 1955, he lived and worked in Vienna. He studied Protestant theology, theater studies, psychology and religious education. From 1994 to 2001 he was editor of the magazine “Das Wort”, an Austrian magazine for evangelical religious education. Since 1974 he has lived in Vienna as an author and teacher for Protestant religion, social learning and performing arts. He is a member of the International Dialect Institute (IDI), the Austrian Dialect Authors/Archives (ÖDA), the Graz Authors’ Meeting (GAV), the Podium Literature Circle and the Austrian Writers’ Association.