Dzanc Books has announced the winner of its 2010 short story collection competition. Jason Ockert, who teaches at Coastal Carolina University outside Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, received the one-thousand-dollar prize, and his second collection, Neighbors of Nothing, will be published in October 2013 by the five-year-old Michigan press that has brought to print works by writers such as Laura van den Berg, Roy Kesey, Terese Svoboda, and Peter Selgin.
Ockert is also the author of Rabbit Punches, published in 2006 by Low Fidelity Press in Brooklyn, New York. In a review of his debut collection, Publishers Weekly says, "Though Ockert's voice is still developing, his beautiful and unexpected imagery make him a writer to be watched."
Take a gander at the author in the video below, in which Ockert previews one of the stories in his forthcoming collection at last year's Virginia Festival of the Book.