Richard Ford 2016 Princess of Asturias Award for Literature

At its meeting in Oviedo, the Jury for the 2016 Princess of Asturias Award for Literature, composed of Xuan Bello Fernández, Blanca Berasátegui Garaizábal, Luis Alberto de Cuenca y Prado, José Luis García Martín, Álex Grijelmo García, Manuel Llorente Manchado, Carmen Millán Grajales, Rosa Navarro Durán, Carme Riera i Guilera, Fernando Rodríguez Lafuente, Fernando Sánchez Dragó, Ana Santos Aramburo, Sergio Vila-Sanjuán Robert, chaired by Darío Villanueva Prieto and with José Luis García Delgado acting as secretary, has decided to confer the 2016 Princess of Asturias Award for Literature on American writer Richard Ford.

His work forms part of the great tradition of the 20th-century American novel. Author of works such as The Sportswriter, Lay of the Land and Canada, his characters, plots and story lines are defined by an ironic, minimalist sense of epic. The careful attention to detail in his descriptions and his sombre, dense gaze at the daily lives of anonymous, invisible people meld with the desolation and emotions emanating from his stories. All this makes Ford a profoundly contemporary narrator, as well as the great chronicler of the mosaic of interwoven tales that is American society.

Oviedo, 15th June 2016