G&A: The Contest Blog

The Dublin City Council announced today that British author Jim Crace has won the 2015 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Crace, who won for his novel Harvest (Doubleday, 2013), will receive €100,000 (approximately $113,000). The annual award, which is one of the world’s largest prizes for a single book, is given for a novel written in English and published in the previous year.

Now in its twentieth year, the IMPAC award only accepts nominations from libraries. Crace’s novel was chosen from 142 titles that were nominated by libraries in 114 cities in thirty-nine countries. The Swiss library Universitätsbibliothek Bern and the Tallahasee, Florida–based­ LeRoy Collins Leon County Public Library both nominated Crace’s novel. Valentine Cunningham, Christine Dwyer Hickey, Daniel Hahn, Kate Pullinger, Jordi Soler, and Eugene R. Sullivan judged.

“It has been an overwhelming surprise and a delight to discover that my latest book has won the IMPAC Dublin award,” said Crace. “Harvest proved to be a generous novel in the writing. Readers and critics were more than generous in their responses. And now, thanks to the further generosity of a whole wide-world network of book-loving strangers, Harvest has struck lucky again—it will be included in the distinguished and twenty-year-long list of fiction honored by this truly international and discriminating award. No writer could hope for more than that.”

The shortlisted novels for the prize were Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; Lulu Norman’s translation from the French of Mahi Binebine’s Horses of God; The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan; Burial Rites by Hannah Kent; Sue Branford’s translation from the Portuguese of Bernardo Kucinski’s K; Geoffrey Strachan’s translation from the French of Andreï Makine’s Brief Loves That Live Forever; TransAtlantic by Colum McCann; Someone by Alice McDermott; and Sparta by Roxana Robinson.

Previous winners of the prize include Juan Gabriel Vásquez for The Sound of Things Falling, Colum McCann for Let the Great World Spin, Per Petterson for Out Stealing Horses, Colm Tóibín for The Master, and Edward P. Jones for The Known World.

Photo: Jim Crace. Credit: Matt Writtle.

Submissions are currently open for Southern Poetry Review’s Guy Owen Award, given annually for a poem. The winner will receive $1,000 and publication in Southern Poetry Review.

Submit three to five poems totaling no more than ten pages with a $20 entry fee, which includes a one-year subscription to Southern Poetry Review, by June 15. Submissions can be made via the online submission system or via postal mail to Department of Languages, Literature, and Philosophy, Armstrong Atlantic State University, 11935 Abercorn Street, Savannah, GA 31419.

Southern Poetry Review staff established the Guy Owen Award in 2002. Recent winners include Traci Rae Letellier for “Outlaw Country,” chosen by the late Claudia Emerson; Janet Smith for “The Children’s Section,” chosen by Arthur Smith; Susan Schmidt for “If They Came Our Way,” chosen by Kathryn Stripling Byer; and Catherine Staples for “Red Rover,” chosen by Carl Dennis. Established in 1958, Southern Poetry Review is published biannually.

Photo: the current issue (Volume 52, Issue 2) of Southern Poetry Review

Submissions are currently open for the inaugural Latin@ Scholarship for the Frost Place’s Conference on Poetry, given to a Latina or Latino poet. The recipient will receive tuition, room, and board—valued at $1,500—to attend the Frost Place’s Conference on Poetry in July in Franconia, New Hampshire.

Poets who self-identify as Latin@, have a strong commitment to the Latin@ community, and are at least 21 years old are eligible to apply. Submit three to five poems of any length with the required entry form by June 15. There is no application fee.

The winner will attend the Frost Place’s annual Conference on Poetry, held from July 12 to July 18 at Robert Frost’s former homestead in Franconia, New Hampshire. The conference features poetry workshops, lectures, craft discussions, readings, and time to write. The 2015 faculty includes Gabriel Fried, Joan Houlihan, John Murillo, Patrick Phillips, and Martha Rhodes.

Poet Javier Zamora, a former attendee of the Conference on Poetry, helped establish the Latin@ scholarship. “My time at the conference was essential in cementing relationships that helped my writing’s early stages,” says Zamora. “Although the faculty is diverse, while at the Frost Place I saw a lack of a Latin@ presence within the attendants….The purpose of this scholarship is to begin to increase our visibility in these spaces. The idea is to create more possibilities for inclusion.”

Submissions are currently open for the Bard College Fiction Prize, given annually to a fiction writer under the age of 40 who has published at least one full-length work of fiction. The winner will receive $30,000 and a one-semester appointment as writer-in-residence at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The recipient must give at least one public lecture and meet informally with students but is not expected to teach traditional courses.

Submit three copies of a published book of fiction, a cover letter, and a curriculum vitae by June 15. There is no application fee. Submissions can be made via postal mail to P.O. Box 5000, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504. Visit the website for complete guidelines.

Established in 2001, the Bard Fiction Prize is “intended to encourage and support young writers of fiction to pursue their creative goals and provide an opportunity to work in a fertile and intellectual environment.” Recent recipients include Laura van den Berg for her second story collection, The Isle of Youth (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013); Bennett Sims for his debut novel, A Questionable Shape (Two Dollar Radio, 2013); Brian Conn for his debut novel, The Fixed Stars (Fiction Collective 2, 2010); and Benjamin Hale for his debut novel, The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore (Twelve, 2011).

The Bard College Written Arts department offers an undergraduate major but no graduate degree in creative writing. Core faculty members include Benjamin Hale, Michael Ives, Porochista Khakpour, Ann Lauterbach, Joseph O’Neill, Susan Fox Rogers, and Mona Simpson.

Submissions are currently open for Midway Journal’s Monstrosities of the Midway Contest. A prize of $1,000 and publication in Midway Journal will be given for a single poem, a group of poems, a short story, or a work of nonfiction. Midway’s editorial staff will select a group of finalists, and award-winning poet Dorianne Laux will select the winner.

Writers are encouraged to submit work that “complicates issues of performance and identity.” Using the online submission manager, send up to five unpublished poems of up to twenty pages, or a piece of fiction or nonfiction of up to six thousand words, along with a $15 entry fee by this Sunday, May 31. Multiple entries will be accepted for publication. Visit the website for complete guidelines.

Launched in 2007, Midway Journal is a Minnesota-based quarterly that aims to “act not only as a bridge between aesthetics (and maybe even coasts), but…to create a sense of place as well. And like any good fair, place is a relative term as the contents and attractions change frequently.”

Submissions are currently open for the 2015 Munster Literature Center Fool for Poetry Chapbook Competition. A cash award of €1,000 (approximately $1,090) and publication by Southword Editions is given for a poetry chapbook. Emerging and established poets from any country are eligible to apply.

One runner-up will receive €500 (approximately $545); both first- and second-place winners will receive fifty copies of their chapbooks. The winning chapbooks will be nominated for the U.K. Forward Prize for best poem and anthology, and winners will be invited to read their work at the 2016 Cork Spring Poetry Festival. The deadline to enter is May 31.

Submit a poetry manuscript between 16 and 25 single-spaced pages, along with a cover letter and a €25 entry fee, to foolforpoetry@munsterlit.ie. Poets based in the U.K. and Ireland may submit their manuscripts via postal mail to The Munster Literature Centre, Frank O’Connor House, 84 Douglas Street, Cork, Ireland. Multiple manuscript entries are accepted. Visit the website for complete guidelines.

The Munster Literature Centre established the Fool for Poetry Chapbook competition in 2005. Previous winners include Virginia Astley and Victoria Kennefick.

Founded in Cork, Ireland, in 1993, the Munster Literature Centre hosts festivals, workshops, readings, and other events to promote and celebrate literature.

Hungarian fiction writer László Krasznahorkai has won the 2015 Man Booker International Prize. Krasznahorkai was presented with the £60,000 award (approximately $90,000) Tuesday evening at a ceremony in London. Kasznahorkai’s two English translators, George Szirtes and Ottilie Mulzet, will split the £15,000 translator’s prize.

The Man Booker International Prize is given biennially to honor a fiction writer who writes in English or whose work has been translated into English. This year’s judges were Nadeem Aslam, Elleke Boehmer, Edwin Frank, Wen-chin Ouyang, and Marina Warner.  The finalists for the prize were César Aira, Hoda Barakat, Maryse Condé, Mia Couto, Amitav Ghosh, Fanny Howe, Ibrahim al-Koni, Alain Mabanckou, and Marlene van Niekerk.

“Laszlo Krasznahorkai is a visionary writer of extraordinary intensity and vocal range who captures the texture of present day existence in scenes that are terrifying, strange, appallingly comic, and often shatteringly beautiful,” said chair of judges Warner. “The Melancholy of Resistance, Sátántangó and Seiobo There Below are magnificent works of deep imagination and complex passions, in which the human comedy verges painfully onto transcendence.”

Born in Gyula, Hungary in 1954, Krasznahorkai has written almost a dozen novels and short story collections, and his works have been translated into German, Polish, French, Spanish, and other languages. New Directions has published English translations of five of his novels. Krasznahorkai is perhaps best known for his 1993 postmodern novel The Melancholy of Resistance, which won numerous literary prizes, including the German Bestenliste Prize and the Kossuth Prize, which is the highest award given in Hungary.

Sponsored by the London-based Man Group, the Man Booker International Prize was established in 2005 and “highlights one writer’s continued creativity, development, and overall contribution to fiction on the world stage.” The Man Group also administers the annual Man Booker Prize for Fiction. Recent winners of the Man Booker International Prize include Lydia Davis (2013), Philip Roth (2011), and Alice Munro (2009).

The New York City–based Center for Fiction has announced its 2015 Emerging Writer Fellows. The annual fellowships are given to emerging fiction writers of any age living in New York City “whose work shows promise of excellence.”

This year’s nine fellows are Naomi Feigelson Chase, Lisa Chen, Nicola DeRobertis-Theye, t’ai freedom ford, Anu Jindal, Stephen Langlois, Melissa Rivero, Samantha Storey, and Ruchika Tomar. The fellows were chosen from over five hundred applicants. Rene Denfeld, Patricia Park, and Ted Thompson judged. Visit the Center for Fiction website for bios of each of this year’s fellows.

As part of the fellowship, each writer receives a grant of $4,000; the option of mentorship with an editor; the opportunity to meet with agents who represent new writers; a Center for Fiction membership; free admission to all Center events for one year, including its Craftwork lecture series on writing; and a 30 percent discount on tuition for select writing workshops at the Center. The fellows will also each give two public readings as part of the Center’s annual program of events.

Emerging writers living in one of the five boroughs of New York City are eligible for the fellowship. The Center for Fiction defines “emerging writer” as one of any age who has not yet published a novel or short story collection with a major or independent publisher, and who is also not currently under contract to a publisher for a work of fiction. Eligible applicants may have had works of fiction published in magazines, literary journals, or online, though previous publication is not required. Writers in degree-granting programs are ineligible.  

Applications for the 2016 Emerging Writers Fellowship will open in the fall. Visit the Center for Fiction website for more information about the fellowship program.

This morning, PEN American Center announced the winners of the 2015 PEN Literary Awards. The annual awards, which total more than $150,000, honor emerging and established writers in seventeen categories including poetry, debut fiction, science writing, translation, biography, and drama. On June 8, the winners will be honored in a ceremony at the New School in New York City. The shortlists and complete list of winners can be found on PEN’s website. Below are the winners for a select few prizes:

Saeed Jones won the $5,000 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry for his collection Prelude to Bruise (Coffee House). Marie Howe, Mary Szybist, and Craig Morgan Teicher judged. The biennial award recognizes the work of an emerging American poet who shows promise of further literary achievement.

Joshua Horwitz won the $10,000 PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award for his book War of the Whales: A True Story (Simon & Schuster). Sue Halpern, Marie Myung-Ok Lee, and Carl Zimmer judged. The annual prize is given for a book of literary nonfiction on the subject of the physical or biological sciences published in the previous year.

Sheri Fink won the $10,000 PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction for her book Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital (Crown). Andrew Blechman, Paul Elie, Azadeh Moaveni, Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, and Paul Reyes judged. The biennial award is given to an author of a book of general nonfiction published in the previous two years that possesses notable literary merit and critical perspective.

Denise Newman won the $3,000 PEN Translation Prize for her translation from the Danish of Naja Heather Cleary’s book Baboon (Two Lines). Lucas Klein, Tess Lewis, and Allison Markin Powell judged. The annual award is given for a translation of book-length prose from any language into English published in the previous year.

PEN will announce the winners of the $25,000 Prize for Debut Fiction, the $10,000 Art of the Essay Award, and the $5,000 Open Book Award at the Literary Awards Ceremony on June 8. Visit the PEN website for the shortlists. The winner of the $10,000 PEN/Fusion Emerging Writers Prize and recipients of the $2,000-$4,000 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grants will be announced later this month.

PEN American Center has administered its literary awards for nearly fifty years. Established in 1922, PEN works globally to defend freedom of expression and to promote international literature and culture.

The Poetry Foundation announced today that Alice Notley has won the 2015 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. The annual award of $100,000 honors the outstanding lifetime achievement of a living U.S. poet.

With a career spanning more than four decades, Notley, sixty-nine, is the author of twenty-five books of poetry, including The Descent of Alette (Penguin, 1996); Mysteries of Small Houses (Penguin, 1998), which received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Disobedience (Penguin, 2001), which won the Griffin International Poetry Prize; and Grave of Light: New and Selected Poems 1970-2005 (Wesleyan, 2006), which was awarded the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. Notley’s other honors and awards include the Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Memorial Award, an Arts and Letters Award from the Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Foundation of Contemporary Arts grant. Later this year, Notley will publish two new poetry collections: Certain Magical Acts and Benediction.

Poetry magazine editor Don Share said of Notley’s work, “Like Whitman, she is simultaneously one of a kind and a poet for each of us: an exemplary, humane, and ultimately essential writer.” Robert Polito, the president of the Poetry Foundation, added, “Book by surprising book, [Notley] reinvents not only herself as a poet, but also what it means for anyone to write a poem at this volatile moment in our history.”

Established in 1986 by Ruth Lilly and sponsored by the Poetry Foundation, the prize is one of the most prestigious American poetry awards and among the largest literary honors for English language works. Adrienne Rich won the inaugural award, and recent winners include Nathaniel Mackey, Marie Ponsot, and W. S. Di Piero.

Notley and the winner of the Pegasus Award for Poetry Criticism will be honored at a ceremony in Chicago on June 8. The Poetry Foundation will announce the winner of the Pegasus Award later this month.

At the Poetry Foundation website, listen to a podcast featuring Notley, who reads and discusses her work, and read a new interview with the Ruth Lilly Prize winner.