Prize of the Young Houses of Literature
For over 20 years, the network of literature houses has been awarding the Prize of the Houses of Literature to an author who has made a special contribution to the success of literary events, alternating with the Prize of the Young Houses of Literature since 2022.
The Young Houses of Literature Prize 2025 goes to Tania Witte
On Thursday, March 27, 2025, the Young Literature Houses Prize 2025 was awarded to author Tania Witte at the Leipzig Book Fair. Together with Josephine Mark and Kathrin Schrocke, she was nominated for the prize and won the vote. Tania Witte is a writer, journalist and spoken word performer. She lives and writes mainly in Berlin and prefers to live in The Hague (NL). She received the Martha Saalfeld Prize for Literature in 2017 and the Mannheimer Feuergriffel for "Marilu" in 2019. In the same year, her work was supported with a work grant from the German Literature Fund. "Die Stille zwischen den Sekunden" received the KIMI seal of approval for diversity in books for young people. Her most recent books are "Einfach nur Paul" (2022), "Marilu" (2021) and "Die Stille zwischen den Sekunden" (2019). With her books, Tania Witte knows how to pick up young people in the "now". She tells stories about their worries and happiness, questions of identity, efforts to achieve diversity and tolerance - in books with fast-paced dialog and great pictures. Above all, however, she reads her way into the hearts of her audience at her events.
The network of literary houses awards the Prize of the Houses of Literature to authors for particularly successful literary events. Since 2022, the Prize of the Houses of Literature has been awarded alternately with the Prize of the Young Houses of Literature. The prize is awarded to authors who have not only created outstanding books for children and young people, but who are also strong in their encounters with their audience, winning over their target group with their language and their performances. The special thing about the Young Authors' Prize is that the young audience decides who receives the prize, as it is an audience award. In addition to selected class juries (each Young House of Literature appointed a class jury), all interested parties were invited to take part in the online voting from February 1 to 28. The vote was accompanied by a social media campaign. The prize is endowed with 8,000 euros, and all three nominees are also invited to events in the network's literature houses.