Here's the video of The Story Prize event on March 2 at The New School. That night, the three finalists—Charles Baxter, Adam Johnson, and Colum McCann—read from and discussed their work on-stage. And at the culmination of the event, we announced the winner for books published in 2015: Adam Johnson's Fortune Smiles.
Monday, March 7, 2016
Friday, March 4, 2016
What The Story Prize Judges Had to Say About Adam Johnson's Fortune Smiles
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| Photo by Beowulf Sheehan |
“In ‘Hurricanes Anonymous,’ one of the six stories in Adam Johnson's Fortune Smiles, a man driving down a road in storm-struck Lake Charles notes an eerie absence: He can't see any reflections in the windows that he passes, because, after the hurricane, there are no windows left. That is a characteristic Johnson observation, astute and unsettling, and it reminded me of the stories themselves, each of which casts a character into an unbarriered darkness: illness, political unrest, natural disaster, sexual violence, imprisonment. Against that darkness (some of it remembered, some if it unfolding, some of it merely dreaded), communication keeps faltering: A father cannot understand his toddler's strange babble; an elderly man's tracheotomy keeps him from speaking with his son; a hologram of an assassinated president mock-converses in remixed fragments of speeches he gave while still alive. Yet for all the disconnect and tragedy, there is something warm and comic and bright about these stories. Johnson writes like Rembrandt painted, richly and specifically, with an inclination toward self-portrait and a gift for making it seem like a whole world carries on not only within but beyond each of these small canvasses.”
“There is not one weak story in this collection. Along with crafting prose that pulls you in and doesn’t let go until it’s finished with you, Johnson excels at creating characters that are both deeply flawed and entirely human and putting them into situations that are at once believable and surreal. Johnson does not shy away from difficult material, but instead uses it to explore the most harrowing moments of the human experience, blending elements of history, science fiction, and psychological horror. Yet, somehow, there is an undercurrent of faint hope that weaves through these stories, as though to say that people can overcome anything, but only if they are willing to face their own weaknesses. A gripping exploration into human nature as told through mesmerizing scenes that will leave you thinking long after you’ve finished reading.”
What The Story Prize Judges Had to Say About Colum McCann's Thirteen Ways of Looking
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| Photo by Beowulf Sheehan |
Here's what the judges had to say about Colum McCann's Thirteen Ways of Looking:
"Part police procedural, part Ulysses, strung across the wirework of a Wallace Stevens poem, the title novella dazzles. It combines a playfulness for genre-melding with the delight of Mendelssohn’s wordplay with the author's wide-open empathy for every character—even the despicable Elliot—to open giant questions about race, aging, and especially class. And while so many layers—is the novella a retelling of Joyce’s 'The Dead'? a rumination on the culture of surveillance? do fathers bear the sins of their sons?—can be teased apart, tasted, and appreciated individually, at bottom the piece remains a gripping murder mystery, and compels a reader to consume it in a single gulp. In the three remaining stories, McCann continues to prove himself a master of sensory detail and the sentence fragment; the confrontation at the climax of 'Treaty' leaves one thrilled, nauseous, and fully-dilated. Few writers use prose this well to show how the human mind can simultaneously occupy multiple places and times."
What The Story Prize Judges Had to Say About Charles Baxter's There's Something I Want You to Do
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| Photo by Beowulf Sheehan |
“There’s a strange and very appealing unpredictability to Baxter’s imagination. He excels at menace, and he executes amazing leaps in time in these stories, like a DVD skipping forward through whole scenes. Best of all, he wrestles with huge stuff: faith, abortion, love, aging, kindness, the countervailing and intertwined forces of beauty and death. Elijah is a wonderful character: hungry, kind, and transcendent. I loved being in his company, and watching him reappear from time to time in the stories. The strong connections between and among stories amplify the significance of each profound and profane moment, all of which become part of a larger canvas of human experience.”
Wednesday, March 2, 2016
Adam Johnson's Fortune Smiles is the 12th Winner of The Story Prize
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| Adam Johnson, winner of The Story Prize (photo © Beowulf Sheehan) |
The other finalists—winners of numerous awards themselves—were authors Charles Baxter for There’s Something I Want You to Do (Pantheon) and Colum McCann for Thirteen Ways of Looking (Random House). At the event at The New School, all three finalists read from and discussed their work on-stage. As runners-up, Baxter and McCann each received $5,000.
In the days and weeks to come, we'll post the judges' citations for the three books, photos from the event and after party, and a link to the video.