Genre: Fiction

Guggenheim Fellows Announced

G&A: The Contest Blog
4.8.16

On Wednesday, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation announced the recipients of its 2016 writing fellowships. Grants of approximately $50,000 each were awarded to twenty-two poets, fiction writers, and nonfiction writers in the United States and Canada on the basis of past achievement and exceptional promise. 

The fellows in poetry are: Beth Bachmann of Nashville, Tennessee; Rick Barot of Tacoma, Washington; Jericho Brown of Decatur, Georgia; Stephen Burt of Belmont, Massachusetts; Cynthia Huntington of Post Mills, Vermont; Sally Keith of Washington, D.C.; James Kimbrell of Tallahassee, Florida; Deborah Landau of Brooklyn, New York; Ed Roberson of Chicago, Illinois; and Brian Turner of Orlando, Florida.

The fellows in fiction are: Jesse Ball of Chicago, Illinois; Jennifer Clement of New York, New York; Amity Gaige of West Hartford, Connecticut; Laila Lalami of Santa Monica, California; Jenny Offill of Red Hook, New York; Jess Row of New York, New York; René Steinke of Brooklyn, New York; and Melanie Rae Thon of Salt Lake City, Utah.

The fellows in nonfiction are: Adam Kirsch of New York, New York; Chris Kraus of Los Angeles, California; Amitava Kumar of Poughkeepsie, New York; Glenn Kurtz of New York, New York; Nick Laird of New York, New York; Paul Lisicky of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Amanda Petrusich of Brooklyn, New York; Robert Storr of New Haven, Connecticut; and Sarah Payne Stuart of Nobleboro, Maine.

Edward Hirsch, president of the Guggenheim Foundation, said of the 2016 class, “These artists and writers, scholars and scientists, represent the best of the best…It’s an honor to be able to support these individuals to do the work they were meant to do.”

Established in 1925, the Guggenheim Foundation fellowship program has granted more than $334 million in annual awards to more than 18,000 individuals. This year, a total of 175 fellowships, including three joint fellowships, were awarded to 178 writers, artists, and scholars. For more information about the program and fellows, visit gf.org.

Genius

Caption: 

"It's what we editors lose sleep over, you know. Are we really making books better or just making them different?" In the new biopic, Genius, Colin Firth stars as Maxwell Perkins, famous editor of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Thomas Wolfe, played by Jude Law. The film is based on the National Book Award–winning biography Maxwell Perkins: Editor of Genius (Dutton, 1978) by A. Scott Berg.

Genre: 
Fiction
Creative Nonfiction
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movie trailer
biography
Genius
Maxwell Perkins
Thomas Wolfe

Allergies

The Time Is Now
4.6.16

Many people experience seasonal allergies during spring caused by the increased amount of pollen and grass present in the air. Write a short story in which one of your characters is affected by seasonal allergies. Is it a condition that proves to have surprisingly dramatic consequences, or one that simply adds a layer of pathos, humor, or realism to the story or character?

James Hannaham Wins PEN/Faulkner Award

G&A: The Contest Blog
4.5.16

The PEN/Faulkner Foundation has announced James Hannaham as the winner of the 36th annual PEN/Faulkner Award for his novel Delicious Foods. The $15,000 award is given annually for a book of fiction by an American author published in the previous year.

Delicious Foods (Little, Brown), Hannaham’s second novel, tells the story of an African American boy who tries to save his mother—who struggles with drug addiction—from a farm where she is held captive. Hannaham, who is interested in experimentation in prose, wrote the novel from the perspective of the boy, the mother, and crack cocaine. Hannaham lives in New York City and teaches at the Pratt Institute.

“This exceptional novel is impressive for many reasons and speaks to the American experience today in a variety of ways, from the entrapment of perspective because of poverty and drug use to the heroic perseverance of character even after the worst of choices and atrocities,” says Sergio Troncoso, who judged this year’s prize along with fiction writers Abby Frucht and Molly McCloskey. “Delicious Foods is a standout work of fiction that will surely expand a reader’s empathy for the struggles of a variety of groups and individuals freeing themselves from modern enslavement.”

The finalists for the prize were Julie Iromuanya for Mr. and Mrs. Doctor (Coffee House Press); Viet Thanh Nguyen for The Sympathizer (Grove Press); Elizabeth Tallent for Mendocino Fire (HarperCollins); and Luis Alberto Urrea for The Water Museum (Little, Brown). Each finalist will receive $5,000. The judges­ selected the finalists from nearly five hundred novels and story collections from 165 publishing houses.

Hannaham and the four finalists will be honored at an awards ceremony at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., on May 14. Recent winners of the prize include Atticus Lish for his novel, Preparation for the Next Life; Karen Joy Fowler for her novel We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves; and Benjamin Alire Sáenz for his story collection Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club.

AAWW Announces 2016 Margins and Open City Fellows

G&A: The Contest Blog
4.1.16

The Asian American Writers Workshop (AAWW) has announced the ten recipients of its 2016 Margins and Open City Fellowships. The fellowships are given to emerging Asian and Asian American creative writers and journalists based in New York City. Fellows receive $2,500 to $5,000, publication in one of AAWW’s online publications, and career development.

The 2016 Margins Fellows are poet Jen Hyde, fiction writer Vt Hung, fiction writer and filmmaker Steven Tagle, and nonfiction writer Wei Tchou. The fellowships each include $5,000, publication opportunities in the Margins, a residency at the Millay Colony for the Arts, writing space at AAWW’s offices in New York City, and guidance and mentorship from writers and editors in the AAWW community.

The Spring 2016 Open City Fellows are nonfiction writers Jai Dulani, Rahimon Nasa, and Thanu Yakupitiyage. Each fellow receives $2,500, publication in Open City, and career development opportunities to “craft narratively driven creative nonfiction and reportage about issues that matter to the 1.6 million Asian immigrants who call the five boroughs home.” This year, AAWW also awarded three Spring 2016 Open City Language Justice Fellows to Liz Chow, Yichen Tu, and Rong Xiaoqing. The fellowships, which offer the same benefits as the Open City Fellowships, are given to Asian-language immigrant journalists. The inaugural fellows will spend six months developing stories from New York City’s Chinatowns and beyond. All three fellows are journalists who have covered New York City immigrant communities for Asian-language media outlets.

The Margins and Open City fellows were selected from a group of more than a hundred applicants by a panel of writers, AAWW board members, and former fellows. The Language Justice fellows were nominated by members of the AAWW community. Applications for the Fall 2016 Open City Fellowships will open in April; applications for the 2017 Margins Fellowships will open in July.

Established in 1991, the AAWW is devoted to advancing the creation and publication of Asian American writing. Read more about the AAWW, which celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary this year, in Arvin Temkar’s article “AAWW Continues the Conversation” in the Jan/Feb 2016 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Photos, top row from left: Jen Hyde (Patrick Delorey), Vt Hung (Diana Mai), Steven Tagle (Christopher Smith Photography), Wei Tchou. Middle: Jai Dulani, Rahimon Nasa, Thanu Yakupitiyage. Bottom: Liz Chow, Yichen Tu, Rong Xiaoqing

 

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