The innovative Hodler Prize has announced the award committee for its second edition! The committee is charged with selecting the best narrator of the year, across a variety of categories: audiovisual, books, video games, journalism, podcasts, blogs, and more.

One aspect that makes the Hodler Prize unique is that the prize money is awarded in Bitcoin, a nod to the multi-dimensional nature of value in today’s digital age. Another aspect is its boundary-breaking inclusivity of the medium in which storytelling can take place:

The Hodler Prize is to culture what MMA is to combat sports: an exhilarating space for confrontation, abolishing categories to witness the birth of a superior form of multi-dimensional storytelling.

The Hodler Prize has assembled an impressive panel of judges for the second edition of the competition, from legendary Swiss curator Hans Ulrich Obrist to award-winning English screenwriter Peter Harness. Among these experts are Nigerian-American poet and artist Precious Okoyomon and Nigerian news commentator Tolu Ogunlesi. Okoyomon transforms their texts into plastic installations, engaging with the natural world, histories of migration and racialization, and the pure pleasures of everyday life. Ogunlesi is known for his sharp insights into the Nigerian news on the social media platform X on which he has over 800,000 followers. Revolutionizing the forms of contemporary art and news analyses respectively, Okoyomon and Ogunlesi make perfect additions to this cutting-edge prize.

The winner of the Hodler Prize 002 will be announced on April 9 in Paris. In the meantime, the works in competition will announced on a weekly basis.

Okoyomon has already selected Alice Notley’s memoir Being Reflected Upon as their selection, commenting: “I chose it because it changed the rhythm of how I saw the world and stopped time completely.” We are still looking forward to Ogunlesi’s selection–follow along on the Hodler Prize substack for the reveal!