Here's the video of The Story Prize event, featuring the three finalists—Edwidge Danticat (the winner), Kali Fajardo-Anstine, and Zadie Smith—reading from and discussing their work:
Showing posts with label 2019/20 Story Prize finalists. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2019/20 Story Prize finalists. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 4, 2020
Thursday, February 27, 2020
What The Story Prize Judges Had to Say About This Year's Winner, Everything Inside by Edwidge Danticat
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| Photo © Beowulf Sheehan |
Here what the judges had to say about Everything Inside by Edwidge Danticat:
“The stories contained in Everything Inside are powerfully written. They are rooted in place and in family. From beginning to end, I found myself spellbound by the care taken with character. Relationships between parent and child, between neighbors and coworkers, and between created families: These bonds were so incredibly, carefully rendered. Love beginning and ending. Life beginning and ending. The way that Edwidge Danticat writes about place—specifically Miami and Haiti—left me feeling as though I were seeing something for the first time. We are all lucky such an important voice is in the world, creating such tender work.”
“It is something to see a writer whose previous work is already canonical write a story collection with the fierce desperation and love usually seen in first books. But Danticat is not one of our regular writers, she is a harking angel. She comes to tell us that the world is new, again and again, and that stories will not lose their urgency, their necessity. These stories zoom from the globality of immigration and natural disaster, to see the human being beneath the news stories and the humanity within each tragedy. Death is a major theme of these stories, and hope does not always prevail, but there remains a belief in human dignity and the importance of acknowledging the humanity in others. This shows in Danticat's choice of words but most often in her choice of narrator—not a spurned wife, but the daughter who never knew her father; not an earthquake survivor, but his lover. Danticat is a cherished writer for lovers of fiction and this book will also be cherished by lovers of politics, sociology and well, lovers of human beings.”
What The Story Prize Judges Had to Say About Finalist Grand Union by Zadie Smith
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| Photo © Beowulf Sheehan |
Here's what the judges had to say about Grand Union by Zadie Smith:
“In 1964, the artist Jasper Johns wrote a note to himself: ‘Take an object / Do something to it / Do something else to it.’ Instructions for artmaking, they resonate for story-making as well. ‘Tell a story. Do something to it. Do something else to it.’ All writers tell a story. The good ones do something to it: tell it in a way we haven’t heard before, give it a fresh truth. The great ones then do something else to it. Zadie Smith is a great one; the ‘something else’ she does to her stories is skin them with a flick of a knife, revealing everything—every muscle, nerve, twitch and throb of life. Just when you think you know where she’s leading you, she zooms out, opening up the narrative to ambiguity and multiple truths. These stories demonstrate her supreme awareness—self-awareness, yes, but also acute and wise awareness of others, and awareness of ‘the whole game, from top to bottom.’”
What The Story Prize Judges Had to Say About Finalist Sabrina & Corina by Kali Fajardo-Anstine
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| Photo © Beowulf Sheehan |
Here what the judges had to say about Sabrina & Corina by Kali Fajardo-Anstine:
“This is a short story collection that will find its way into your dreams—often as nightmares. The women of these stories will awake you in the middle of the night—they will be a warning. Fajardo-Anstine crafts each story around major turning points in the lives of Native and Latinx women from and of Colorado. As a writer, she is able to build characters who withstand and succumb to incredible physical pain and emotional strife-—but we never feel that we must look away. She makes her characters human enough that we feel it our duty to look, to keep reading. Without being overly plot driven, the stories are page turners. Without being overly dramatic, the stories make the reader feel agony. Fajardo-Anstine achieves this by writing with restraint in her sentences but with brimming emotional and physical honesty. Women have bodies, emotions, histories—and most of all women have each other. After each story I found myself wanting to call, touch, be with my sister, friends, daughters, nieces, cousins, aunts, mothers. Another way to be with them is to say, read this book.”
Wednesday, February 26, 2020
Edwidge Danticat Is the First Ever Two-Time Winner of The Story Prize for Everything Inside!
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.
Thursday, January 9, 2020
The 2019/20 Finalists for The Story Prize Are: Edwidge Danticat, Kali Fajardo-Anstine, and Zadie Smith
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