Prada isn’t content to be the artist’s preferred fashion label. Following a six-month search for writers, the Italian house unveiled the winners of the Prada Journal literary contest in its Soho Epicenter in New York.

Not for the word-shy, the event saw the flagship transformed into a “theater of conversation and exchange,” an idea taken from the literary salons of yore, intimate and dark spaces ideal for telling stories.

The contest, created in partnership with Giangiacomo Feltrinelli publishers, drew 1,313 entries from all over the world. Each hopeful responded to the question: “What are the realities that our eyes give back to us? And how are these realities filtered through lenses?” Because, yes, this is also about promoting a line of optical glasses, Prada Journal, a suitably nerdy style for him and a slightly cat-eye style her. Think beatnik.

The five winners — Mattia Conti, Leisl Egan, Angel Mario Fernández, Sarah Harris Waman, Peng Yang — will receive 5000 euros each. Their winning manuscripts will also be digitally published jointly by Prada and Giangiacomo Feltrinelli later this year. But the prize among prizes might have been the animated reading of the entries by authors Jonathan Ames, Zoe Kazan, Anthony Mackie, Jay McInerney and Gary Shteyngart.