The award ceremony wrapped up in the main hall of Florence’s regional government building.

Abdolmalekian was named this year’s laureate for his “emotional sincerity” and “poetic force,” according to a statement from the prize jury.

Each year, the Ceppo honors a poet or author whose work has been translated into Italian. Past winners include Mario Vargas Llosa, Mohamed Bennis, and Antonio Carvajal.

The 2025 jury, made up of 35 Italian poets and writers, called Abdolmalekian’s voice “fresh” and “deeply moving.”

His poetry, the statement read, begins from a “personal lens” but stretches outward to reflect “the current conditions of Iran and the Middle East.”

“He writes with an aesthetic power that transforms social concerns into striking language,” the panel noted, calling his work a “continuation” of Persian poetry’s rich heritage.

During the three-day festival, the Ceppo Academy hosted readings, talks, and discussions with Abdolmalekian in multiple venues across Florence.

A new essay by the poet, titled ‘Poetry, the Shelter of the Contemporary Human,’ was also launched during the event as part of a collected volume on poetry.

Several of Abdolmalekian’s books have been translated into Italian over the past few years by Faezeh Mardani and Francesco Occhetto.

Born in 1980, Garous Abdolmalekian is the author of seven books of poetry including 'Lean Against This Late Hour', translated by Ahmad Nadalizadeh and Idra Novey (Penguin, 2020). He is currently a poetry editor at Cheshmeh Publishing in Tehran.

Abdolmalekian is the recipient of the Karnameh Poetry Book of the Year Award and the Iranian Youth Poetry Book Prize. As well as Italian, his poems have been translated into Arabic, French, German, Kurdish, and Spanish.

As well as 'The War Had Ended and Peace Was Killing People', Jutta Himmelreich has the translation of works by other Iranian literati such as authors Houshang Golshiri and Shahrnush Parsipur in her career.