Earlier this week, the Center for Fiction in New York City presented its (newly-renamed) Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize to a decorated veteran of the U.S. Marines whose debut novel tells a story informed by his time serving in Vietnam. Author Karl Marlantes received the ten-thousand-dollar award for his book, Matterhorn (Grove/Atlantic), selected by jurors Oscar Hijuelos, Sheila Kohler, John Pipkin, Dawn Raffel, and John Wray.
Also this week, United States Artists announced its 2010 fellows. Honored this year with awards of fifty thousand dollars each are poet Martín Espada, whose collection Trouble Ball is forthcoming in 2011 from Norton; poet and translator Khaled Mattawa, whose most recent book is Tocqueville (New Issues Poetry and Prose); poet Brighde Mullins, also a playwright, author of the chapbook Water Stories (Slapering Hol Press, 2003), and fiction writer Susan Steinberg, whose most recent short story collection is Hydroplane (Fiction Collective Two, 2006).
The awards honor artistic excellence in the field, determined by a panel of writers' peers. Fellowships are also given annually to playwrights, dramatists, filmmakers, visual artists, folk artists, and musicians—thirty in all this year.
In the video below, USA fellow Steinberg performs her story "Powerhouse" at a reading for the Rumpus.