Literary Awards by Year
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Adam Hochschild
2005 Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction
Adam Hochschild is a writer and a founding editor of Mother Jones. His books include Half the Way Home: A Memoir of Father and Son; The Mirror at Midnight: A South African Journey; The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin; Finding the Trapdoor: Essays, Portraits, Travels; the acclaimed King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa; and, most recently, Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves.
Hochschild is a former commentator on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered.” He teaches writing at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley and lives in San Francisco.
Adam Hochschild Bio and Cross Links
...HideThe New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War
2005 Lannan Literary Award for An Especially Notable Book
Andrew J. Bacevich is Professor of International Relations at Boston University. A graduate of the U. S. Military Academy, he received his PhD in American Diplomatic History from Princeton University. Before joining the faculty of Boston University in 1998, he taught at West Point and at Johns Hopkins University. His books include American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U. S. Diplomacy and The Imperial Tense: Problems and Prospects of American Empire. His essays and reviews have appeared in a wide variety of scholarly and general interest publications including The Wilson Quarterly, The National Interest, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The Nation, The American Conservative, and The New Republic. Bacevich received the inaugural Lannan Literary Award for An Especially Notable Book in 2005 for his most recent book, The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War.
The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War Bio and Cross Links
...HideDavid G. Campbell
2005 Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction
David G. Campbell, scientist, educator and author, joined the scientific staff of the New York Botanical Garden after earning a PhD at Johns Hopkins. He spent eight years in the field in the Brazilian Amazon conducting research on the biogeography of trees. In 1987 he joined the sixth Brazilian expedition to Antarctica, studying the life cycles and pathologies of the invertebrate parasites of crustaceans, fish and seals.
He is the author of The Ephemeral Islands: A Natural History of the Bahamas; The Crystal Desert: Summers in Antarctica; Islands in Space and Time, and most recently, A Land of Ghosts: The Braided Lives of People and the Forest in Far Western Amazonia. He is currently Professor of Biology at Grinnell College in Iowa.
David G. Campbell Bio and Cross Links
...HideGilbert Sorrentino
2005 Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award
Gilbert Sorrentino, “like a reckless heir to Borges, Barthelme and Groucho Marx, co-opts the language of critical discourse to subvert his audience’s preconceptions and, in so doing, redraws the boundaries of ‘acceptable’ art” (The New York Times). For much of the 1950’s and 60’s, Sorrentino published literary journals and magazines and in 1965 took a job at Grove Press where his first editing assignment was Alex Haley’s The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
Sorrentino’s first novel, The Sky Changes, was published in 1966, and over 20 titles of fiction and poetry have followed. In 1973, Sorrentino published his most commercially successful work, Mulligan Stew. Of his novel, Blue Pastoral, the Atlantic Monthly says, “Sorrentino demonstrates, with a steady flow of puns, parodies, misquotations (deliberate), incorrect historical references (ditto), and hideous verse (presumably also ditto), that the country abounds in foolishness.”
Gilbert Sorrentino Bio and Cross Links
...HideNadeem Aslam
2005 Lannan Literary Fellowship
Nadeem Aslam was born in Pakistan and immigrated with his family to Great Britain at the age of fourteen. He now lives in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, in northern England.
His first novel, Season of the Rainbirds, was shortlisted for the Whitbread Best First Novel Award and the Mail on Sunday/John Llewelyn Rhys Memorial Prize; it won the Betty Trask Award and the Author’s Club Best First Novel Award. It was also on the longlist for the Booker Prize. His second novel, Maps for Lost Lovers, was awarded the Kiriyama Prize in fiction and the British Society of Author’s 2005 Encore Prize for best second novel. He is currently at work on a third novel, about America’s war on terror.
Nadeem Aslam Bio and Cross Links
...HideJudy Budnitz
2005 Lannan Literary Fellowship
Judy Budnitz’s stories have appeared in numerous literary magazines including The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, The Paris Review, and McSweeney’s, and she is the recipient of an O. Henry Award and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
She is the author of, most recently, Nice Big American Baby, and Flying Leap, which was a New York Times Notable Book in 1998. Her novel, If I Told You Once, won the Edward Lewis Wallant Award in the United States and was short-listed for the Orange Prize in the United Kingdom. She lives in San Francisco and is at Princeton University for the Fall 2005 semester as a Council of the Humanities Fellow.
Judy Budnitz Bio and Cross Links
...HideFreeman House
2005 Lannan Literary Fellowship
Freeman House is a former commercial salmon fisher who has been involved with a community-based watershed restoration effort in northern California for more than twenty-five years. He is a co-founder of the Mattole Salmon Group and the Mattole Restoration Council.
His book, Totem Salmon: Life Lessons from Another Species received the best nonfiction award from the San Francisco Bay Area Book Reviewers Association and the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award for quality of prose.
Freeman House Bio and Cross Links
...HideW.S. Merwin
2004 Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award
W.S. Merwin poet, translator, and environmental activist, has become one of the most widely read poets in America, with a career spanning five decades. The son of a Presbyterian minister, for whom he began writing hymns at the age of five, Merwin went to Europe as a young man and developed a love of languages that led to work as a literary translator.
Over the years, his poetic voice has moved from the more formal and medieval to a more distinctly American voice. W.S. Merwin’s recent poetry is perhaps his most personal, arising from his deeply held anti-imperialist, pacifist, and environmentalist beliefs. In 2005 he will have three new books: Migration: Selected Poems 1951-2001; a book of poems called Present Company; and the memoir Summer Doorways which chronicles his days as a student in seminary school and at Princeton, through the next years spent as a tutor for children of privilege living abroad.
William Merwin was the recipient of the 2004 Lannan Literary Lifetime Achievement Award.
W.S. Merwin Bio and Cross Links
...HideRikki Ducornet
2004 Lannan Literary Award for Fiction
Rikki Ducornet, a cosmopolitan and intellectual artist, has lived in North Africa, South America, France, and Canada. Of her most recent book, Gazelle, the Washington Post writes, ”[It] is a sensuous book. A mix of smells pervades its pages, from orange blossoms, perfumes, mint, almonds, limes, roses, jasmine, and long-simmered delicacies to animal dung, vinegar, urine, and long-buried mummies. Great stand-alone sentences are enough to make one’s mouth water.”
Rikki Ducornet Bio and Cross Links
...HidePeter Reading
2004 Lannan Literary Award for Poetry
Mr. Reading was born in Liverpool, England, in 1947 and studied painting at the Liverpool College of Art. He is one of the most inventive and challenging poets in England. His language is brilliantly original, compassionate, and laced with acid humor. Mr. Reading was the first writer to hold a one-year writing Lannan residency in Marfa, Texas. In June of 1999 Mr. Reading read from his work composed during his residency, as part of Readings & Conversations.
He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in his native England. Reading is one of Britain’s most controversial poets: angry, gruesomely ironic, hilarious, heartbreaking, and prolific. His work is experimental, playing with formal traditions of English in liberating ways, and he has produced a body of work that is frequently interrelated across book titles. His poetry has been collected into three volumes by Bloodaxe (UK) and critical assessments of his work have been written by Neil Roberts, Sean O’Brien, and Anthony Thwaite. “Anger is a country Peter Reading has been colonising for years. . .his anger is expressed with classical clarity. Rage against the state of the nation, yes, but also rage against the darkness of death, exile, and inability to show love.” – The Observer (London)
Peter Reading Bio and Cross Links
...HideLuís Alberto Urrea
2004 Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction
Luís Alberto Urrea, poet, fiction, and nonfiction writer, was born in Tijuana, Mexico, in 1955 and grew up in San Diego. Steeped in personal knowledge of US/Mexico border culture, he is best known for his numerous books and essays where he writes “with a tragic and beautiful intimacy that has no equal.”(Boston Globe) His autobiographical Nobody’s Son: Notes from an American Life won an American Book Award in 1999, and Across the Wire was a New York Times notable book of the year in 1993.
The son of an Anglo-American mother and a Mexican father, he says, “Home isn’t just a place, it is also a language.”
Luís Alberto Urrea Bio and Cross Links
...HideEdwidge Danticat
2004 Lannan Literary Fellowship
Edwidge Danticat is the author of several books, including Krik? Krak!, a collection of short stories that encompass both the cruelties and the high ideals of Haitian life. Danitcat’s latest novel, The Dew Breaker, spins a series of related stories around a shadowy central figure, a Haitian immigrant to the U.S. who reveals to his artist daughter that he is not, as she believes, a prison escapee, but a former prison guard and skilled torturer.
When asked about being a role model for her country she replied, “There are millions and millions of Haitian voices. Mine is only one. My greatest hope is that mine becomes one voice in a giant chorus that is trying to understand and express artistically what it’s like to be a Haitian immigrant in the United States.” Danticat was born in Haiti and moved to the United States when she was twelve. She lives in Miami with her husband and daughter.
Edwidge Danticat Bio and Cross Links
...HideThomas Frank
2004 Lannan Literary Fellowship
Thomas Frank, writer and social critic, founded The Baffler in 1988 in Chicago, a magazine devoted to cultural criticism. He has authored three nonfiction books: The Conquest of Cool in 1997 about the advertising industry of the 1960’s and its discovery of the counterculture; One Market Under God in 2000, a study of the mythology of the “New Economy” and the corporate populism of the 1990’s; and in 2004, What’s the Matter with Kansas?, an examination of pop conservatism in his home state and by extension, across the country.
Frank’s writing “is so dazzlingly witty and scornful it can stand comparison with the works of Twain or Mencken.” The Observer (London)
Thomas Frank Bio and Cross Links
...HideMavis Gallant
2004 Lannan Literary Fellowship
Mavis Gallant, born in Canada, was dispatched at four to her first boarding school. In her 20s, she worked as a journalist before moving to Paris in 1950. She is the author of three novels and thirteen collections of short stories. A master of the latter form, her stories are witty, sharp, and polished and frequently play with the balance between real and believed or altered memory.
At 81, she is still writing fiction and editing her journals, her observations of Europe for 50 years, for publication. Gallant’s current editor at The New Yorker, Daniel Manaker, says of her work, “Writers of her caliber in any given genre are three or four a century.” She herself says, “Literature is no more and nothing less than a matter of life and death.”
Mavis Gallant Bio and Cross Links
...HideMicheline Aharonian Marcom
2004 Lannan Literary Fellowship
Micheline Aharonian Marcom was born in Saudi Arabia and raised in Los Angeles. Her first book, Three Apples Fell from Heaven, set in Turkey between 1915-1917, depicts the Ottoman government’s epic genocide of the Armenian population and was named one of the best books of the year by both The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times.
Micheline Aharonian Marcom Bio and Cross Links
...HideRebecca Seiferle
2004 Lannan Literary Fellowship
Rebecca Seiferle has published three books of poetry, is editor/publisher of the literary website, The Drunken Boat, and is a noted translator of major poets from the Spanish language tradition. After many years on staff at San Juan Community College in Farmington, NM, she is currently teaching at Brandeis University.
Her first book, The Ripped-Out Seam, was published in 1993 to great acclaim and her second, The Music We Dance To, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and the 1998 Cecil Hemley Award from the Poetry Society of America. Her latest collection, Bitters, was published in 2001 and won a Pushcart Prize and the Western States Book Award.
Rebecca Seiferle Bio and Cross Links
...HideChris Abani
2003 Lannan Literary Fellowship
Chris Abani’s novels are GraceLand (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004) and Masters of the Board (Delta, 1985). His poetry collections include Dog Woman (Red Hen, Fall 2004), Daphne’s Lot (Red Hen, 2003), and Kalakuta Republic (Saqi, 2001).
He teaches in the MFA Program at Antioch University, Los Angeles and is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of California, Riverside. A Middleton Fellow at the University of Southern California, he is the recipient of the 2001 PEN USA Freedom-to-Write Award, the 2001 Prince Claus Award and a 2003 Lannan Literary Fellowship.
Chris Abani Bio and Cross Links
...HideGeorge Evans
2003 Lannan Literary Fellowship
San Francisco writer George Evans is the author of five poetry books published in the USA and England, most recently The New World (2002). Recipient of many literary awards, he has also published two volumes of contemporary poetry translations. A veteran of the Vietnam American War, his internationally published writings are those of a longtime antiwar activist, advocate for the homeless, and promoter of social change.
George Evans Bio and Cross Links
...HideLinda Gregg
2003 Lannan Literary Fellowship
Linda Gregg was born in Suffren, New York, grew up in bucolic Marin County, California, and has traveled extensively. Her poetry collections include Things and Flesh, Chosen by the Lion, The Sacraments of Desire, Alma, and Too Bright to See.
She has taught at the University of Iowa, Columbia University, and the University of California-Berkeley. She has won a Guggenheim fellowship, a Whiting Award, and a National Endowment for the Arts grant, and she is the 2003 winner of the Sara Teasdale Award. Gregg lives in New York City.
Linda Gregg Bio and Cross Links
...HideChris Offutt
2003 Lannan Literary Fellowship
Chris Offutt grew up in Haldeman, Kentucky, a former mining community of two hundred people, and graduated from Morehead State University, KY. He is the author of No Heroes, The Same River Twice, Kentucky Straight, Out of the Woods, and The Good Brother. Honors for his work include Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships. Offutt is a visiting professor at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
Chris Offutt Bio and Cross Links
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