In case you missed The Story Prize event on March 5 at The New School, here's the video. That night, the three finalists—Andrea Barrett, Rebecca Lee, and George Saunders—read from and discussed their work on-stage. And at the culmination of the event, we announced the winner for books published in 2013: George Saunders' Tenth of December.
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
Sunday, March 9, 2014
What the Judges Had to Say About Rebecca Lee's Bobcat
When the three judges for The Story Prize make their choices, they provide citations for the books. This year's judges were Stephen Enniss, Antonya Nelson, and Rob Spillman. We include the citations in congratulatory letters we present to each finalist, along with their checks ($20,000 to the winner, $5,000 to the other two finalists). To protect the confidentiality of the judges' votes and the integrity of the process, we don't attribute citations to any particular judge.
Here's what the judges said about Rebecca Lee's Bobcat:
Here's what the judges said about Rebecca Lee's Bobcat:
“The pleasures of Rebecca Lee’s writing are many—from beautifully crafted sentences to sublime lyricism to biting wit. Simultaneously romantic and cynical, funny and serious, clever and honest—the stories in Bobcat somehow manage several delicate balancing acts with seeming ease. I can’t remember taking greater pleasure in reading a short story collection, and I felt truly bereft when it was over.”
Saturday, March 8, 2014
What the Judges Had to Say About Andrea Barrett's Archangel
When the three judges for The Story Prize make their choices, they provide citations for the books. This year's judges were Stephen Enniss, Antonya Nelson, and Rob Spillman. We include the citations in congratulatory letters we present to each finalist, along with their checks ($20,000 to the winner, $5,000 to the other two finalists). To protect the confidentiality of the judges' votes and the integrity of the process, we don't attribute citations to any particular judge.
Here's what the judges said about Andrea Barrett's Archangel:
“When a void seems to separate the humanities and the sciences, Andrea Barrett offers us stories of discovery that bridge this chasm and reunite these estranged dimensions of experience. These stories probe our innate curiosity about our world. The men and women of her stories pose questions, and in that boldness affirm the power of the creative mind in community with others. Even as scientific principles come into clearer view, fictive patterns emerge in Archangel, reminding us of the larger narrative of human advance and discovery that is both personal and communal. Andrea Barrett writes stories that bind.”
Friday, March 7, 2014
News Flash: What They're Saying About The Story Prize Event
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| Andrea Barrett, George Saunders, and Rebecca Lee (photo: Beowulf Sheehan) |
The Outlet (Electric Literature)
Like Fire (Open Letters Monthly)
Last Night's Reading: George Saunders, Andrea Barrett
AP
Reuters
PublishersWeekly
GalleyCat
NPR
Shelf Awareness
Poets & Writers
Entertainment Weekly
The Post Standard and here
Star News
Book People
Fiction Writers Review
What the Judges Had to Say About George Saunders' Tenth of December
When the three judges for The Story Prize make their choices, they provide citations for the books. This year's judges were Stephen Enniss, Antonya Nelson, and Rob Spillman. We include the citations in congratulatory letters we present to each finalist, along with their checks ($20,000 to the winner, $5,000 to the other two finalists). To protect the confidentiality of the judges' votes and the integrity of the process, we don't attribute citations to any particular judge.
Here's what the judges said about George Saunders' Tenth of December, this year's winner of The Story Prize:
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| George Saunders accepts The Story Prize (photo: Beowulf Sheehan) |
Here's what the judges said about George Saunders' Tenth of December, this year's winner of The Story Prize:
"This is a masterful short story collection. Full of formal innovations whose purpose is to illuminate character in new ways, these stories reveal the darkest parts of humanity while simultaneously giving us light and hope. They read like an indictment of our current condition but also as a timeless reflection on morality in a frequently unmoral world. The shifts in tone and point of view, sometimes within the same story, are dazzling. Craft, vision, and heart come together in an alchemical reaction creating a work of art that is much greater than the sum of its parts. At turns beautiful and heartbreaking, Tenth of December is destined to be a work of art that defines our times."
"George Saunders offers, in Tenth of December, a vision and version of our world that takes into account the serious menace all around us without denying the absurd pleasures that punctuate life. This book is very funny and very sad. Its author is generous and wise, and his voice, in bringing us The News, is utterly, charmingly, wonderfully unique."
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
George Saunders Wins His First Book Award, The Story Prize, for Tenth of December
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| George Saunders with the winner's bowl (photo by Beowulf Sheehan) |
Pretty heady stuff—especially considering that those are just some of the highlights. Still, one thing George Saunders had never accomplished—that is until last night—was winning a book award. Well, now he has. Saunders' story collection, Tenth of December, is this year's winner of The Story Prize. After he and fellow finalists Andrea Barrett and Rebecca Lee read from and discussed their work on stage at The New School in New York City, the Founder of The Story Prize, Julie Lindsey, announced Saunders as the winner, and he took the stage to accept the award.
In the days ahead, here and on our Web site, we'll post more about this, including citations from the judges, photos (also on Instagram) from the event and the after party, video, and links to media coverage.
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
The Story Prize and McNally Jackson: It's All About the Books
The Story Prize event is tomorrow night (March 5) at 7:30 p.m. at The New School's auditorium at 66 West 12th Street. The three finalists, Andrea Barrett (Archangel), Rebecca Lee (Bobcat), and George Saunders (Tenth of December) will read from and discuss their work on-stage. At the end, we'll announce the winner. We hope you can join us.
The evening aims, most of all, to be a celebration of these three authors, their incredible books, and, more broadly, short story collections. We're pleased to have one of the top independent booksellers around, McNally Jackson, selling signed copies at the event. And McNally Jackson is making it especially easy for anyone there—and those who can't be—to get copies.
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| The McNally Jackson book table at last year's event (L to R, Brett Duquette, and booksellers Anna Chen and Javier Molea) photo © Beowulf Sheehan |
- Let's say you're at the event and want to buy signed copies of the books, but you don't want to lug them around all night (or are prone to accidentally leaving things behind, like some of us are). No problem: McNally Jackson will provide free shipping for anyone who buys three or more books. You walk out empty handed (or no more burdened than you were when you arrived), and the books show up later at your house.
- Let's say a book is sold out, and you want a copy. McNally Jackson will follow up by shipping it after the event.
- Let's say you can't make the event and still would like signed copies of Archangel, Bobcat, or Tenth of December. For one month after the event, McNally Jackson will ship signed copies of the three finalists' books for free (while supplies last) when ordered from their Web site. All you need to do to get free shipping is to type into the comment box at checkout: Free Shipping-The Story Prize.
We're very pleased that McNally Jackson is the official bookseller of The Story Prize. And last year, bookseller-in-chief Sarah McNally served as one of our judges. Our ultimate aim is to get more short story collections into readers' hands, particularly those of our finalists. Hats off to our bookseller for making it easier to buy these books—and, we hope, a little harder not to.
Sunday, March 2, 2014
Day Four at AWP Seattle: Dear Writer...
With The Story Prize event just days away, we're unable to attend this year's AWP Conference—the Association of Writers & Writing Programs' annual gathering. So we've enlisted Molly Reid, a Portland-based writer, to report from the goings on in Seattle.
My bag is heavy. Such lovely books, some as small as a postcard, others the size of a newspaper, with haunting covers in matte and gloss and simple paper, beckoning you to touch, smell the ink, read the words inside. The Saturday afternoon mob at the bookfair is a polite mob, a literary mob. There is little malice here, just the frenzied feeding on free swag. The magazines and presses are giving away their wares so they don’t have to lug it all home, if not for free then severely discounted. And even though you know you can’t fit another thing into your suitcase, it’s hard to pass up the new issue of Mid-American Review.
Not just books. There are magnets, notepads, postcards, pins, screen cleaners, oranges, candy, T-shirts, bags, broadsides, and fortune cookies. Rumors circulate: So-and-so has the best chocolate (Omnidawn by unofficial consensus). There is a table offering a shot of whiskey (I search in vain, going up and down the aisles; with 650 exhibitors, it can be hard to find what you’re looking for, especially if you don’t have the name of a journal and you’re afraid to ask, "Where is the free whiskey?"). At Iron Horse Review, you can take your picture with someone wearing a rubber horse head.
The bookfair is a chance to actually meet the people who read and publish—or reject—your work. The process of submitting can feel anonymous and disheartening, sending out stories and poems into the void, or maw, whatever vast or violent metaphor is appropriate for the piece and the nature of the rejection. After putting everything into your work, sweating in the dark private rooms of your soul, you offer your creation to the world, to someone, probably, you’ve never met before—nameless, faceless—who more often than not rejects it, sometimes with a form letter that doesn’t even have your name, just “Dear Writer, Thank you for the opportunity to consider this. I’m sorry to say, this piece is not right for us at this time.”
The bookfair reveals these editors and interns to be actual people, who are genuinely interested in you and your work, who work so hard to put good art into the world. The bookfair joins writers with the places and people who help them reach an audience, with most of that audience roaming the aisles. It brings the community of presses and magazines and writing programs together and allows them to interact and put names to faces and meet the writers they champion. “One of the most valuable things here,” Stephanie G’Schwind, editor of Colorado Review, says, “is meeting the authors we work closely with, and meeting our potential authors, letting them see there’s a face, a human being, behind the magazine.”
The bookfair is the big crooked beating heart at the center of AWP, and as I watch the interns carefully pack all their books and magazines and key chains into boxes, chocolate foils crinkled on the carpet at their feet, I feel sad this is all coming to a close, and so very grateful for these literary pioneers and architects. An editor gave me a bottle of wine she couldn’t fit, and, even though I had no room in my bag, I accepted it with pleasure—it was the least I could do.
AWP Conference, Seattle, 2014: Day Four
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| Speaking Swaghili |
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| The man in the iron horse |
The bookfair is a chance to actually meet the people who read and publish—or reject—your work. The process of submitting can feel anonymous and disheartening, sending out stories and poems into the void, or maw, whatever vast or violent metaphor is appropriate for the piece and the nature of the rejection. After putting everything into your work, sweating in the dark private rooms of your soul, you offer your creation to the world, to someone, probably, you’ve never met before—nameless, faceless—who more often than not rejects it, sometimes with a form letter that doesn’t even have your name, just “Dear Writer, Thank you for the opportunity to consider this. I’m sorry to say, this piece is not right for us at this time.”
The bookfair reveals these editors and interns to be actual people, who are genuinely interested in you and your work, who work so hard to put good art into the world. The bookfair joins writers with the places and people who help them reach an audience, with most of that audience roaming the aisles. It brings the community of presses and magazines and writing programs together and allows them to interact and put names to faces and meet the writers they champion. “One of the most valuable things here,” Stephanie G’Schwind, editor of Colorado Review, says, “is meeting the authors we work closely with, and meeting our potential authors, letting them see there’s a face, a human being, behind the magazine.”
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| At the tables: actual people |
—Molly Reid
Saturday, March 1, 2014
Days Two and Three at AWP Seattle: A Hallucinatory Experience
With The Story Prize event just days away, we're unable to attend this year's AWP Conference—the Association of Writers & Writing Programs' annual gathering. So we've enlisted Molly Reid, a Portland-based writer, to report from the goings on in Seattle.
It’s morning, day three of the conference, and I am hung over. But not in the traditional sense. New ideas, old friends, epiphanies, readings, and okay a little alcohol—combine to create a brand new kind of vertigo. There is a zombie quality now to the escalator throngs. The sort of daze that arrives after so much engagement. Everyone is ruffled at this point. Only Chang-rae Lee still looks dapper (at least as far as I could tell—he was on the other side of the bar surrounded by friends and fans).
After listening to people talk about novel structure and character-driven plot and the pure messy magic of ink, I realize I trust them, these panelists: They choose their words with such care. They say what I’ve thought but haven’t been able to articulate and also what I’ve never thought but is so true it’s accompanied by ache. Sure there are duds in the bunch, and standing-room only out the door at some panels (I was squeezed out of “Magic and the Intellect” with Rikki Ducornet, which I have a feeling would have changed my life), but I for one still feel like I’m getting my money’s worth. There is a genuine attempt to gather failure and success and impart something.
One thing that’s great about AWP is that people don’t come to bag an agent or impress an editor, which makes it easier to see that there is such authentic warmth and support. People spend all day going to panels and manning tables at the book fair, and then they spend all night going to readings to hear people they love and those they admire and some they’ve never heard of read their work. Voluntarily. Exhausted. Hungry. They go, and they listen intently, and they clap and holler.
Literary journals host readings of the coolest writers you’ve never heard of, and their juxtaposition—these writers who live all over the country and are rarely in the same place at the same time—creates a lovely hallucinatory experience. At The Southern Humanities Review/Carolina Wren Press reading last night, a woman read an essay about a lucky dress worn to her husband’s surgery. This was immediately followed by a poet’s image of a man giving CPR to a lady gorilla. Another poet talked about the cities we build inside ourselves. Someone read from a novel about a Cuban-American family’s struggle with dreams and expectations.
As the night goes on, there is an exodus, as writers are kicked out of one place and move onto another, searching for one last piece of goodness, brilliance, laughter—from the bar to the Elliott Bay Book Company to the Hugo House, back to the bar. The Hugo House is so crowded the reading is piped in to the other rooms like commands from a submarine captain you can’t see.
But it’s our submarine. We are the ones manning this ship—is it heading to the rocks, or open water? (Sorry about that metaphor, but I went to a panel yesterday called “From Sea to Sea: Poets on the Power of Water” and everything’s running together, in a good way.)
—Molly Reid
AWP Conference, Seattle, 2014: Days Two and Three
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| Writing advice with a smile at the One Story booth (P34) (L-R: author Marie-Helene Bertino, someone else) |
After listening to people talk about novel structure and character-driven plot and the pure messy magic of ink, I realize I trust them, these panelists: They choose their words with such care. They say what I’ve thought but haven’t been able to articulate and also what I’ve never thought but is so true it’s accompanied by ache. Sure there are duds in the bunch, and standing-room only out the door at some panels (I was squeezed out of “Magic and the Intellect” with Rikki Ducornet, which I have a feeling would have changed my life), but I for one still feel like I’m getting my money’s worth. There is a genuine attempt to gather failure and success and impart something.
One thing that’s great about AWP is that people don’t come to bag an agent or impress an editor, which makes it easier to see that there is such authentic warmth and support. People spend all day going to panels and manning tables at the book fair, and then they spend all night going to readings to hear people they love and those they admire and some they’ve never heard of read their work. Voluntarily. Exhausted. Hungry. They go, and they listen intently, and they clap and holler.
Literary journals host readings of the coolest writers you’ve never heard of, and their juxtaposition—these writers who live all over the country and are rarely in the same place at the same time—creates a lovely hallucinatory experience. At The Southern Humanities Review/Carolina Wren Press reading last night, a woman read an essay about a lucky dress worn to her husband’s surgery. This was immediately followed by a poet’s image of a man giving CPR to a lady gorilla. Another poet talked about the cities we build inside ourselves. Someone read from a novel about a Cuban-American family’s struggle with dreams and expectations.
As the night goes on, there is an exodus, as writers are kicked out of one place and move onto another, searching for one last piece of goodness, brilliance, laughter—from the bar to the Elliott Bay Book Company to the Hugo House, back to the bar. The Hugo House is so crowded the reading is piped in to the other rooms like commands from a submarine captain you can’t see.
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| Hint: His name rhymes with AWP |
—Molly Reid
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