Literary Awards by Year
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W.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
...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 was imprisoned by the Nigerian regime for his writings when he was a teenager. Over two decades later, he has transcended his adversity with creativity—by finding redemption and purpose in his art. His novel Graceland, winner of the 2005 PEN/Hemingway Award, is a moving portrait of a teenage Elvis impersonator, set against the colorful, postcolonial backdrop of one of the world’s largest cities, Lagos. Becoming Abigail, his poetic novella about a fiercely independent Nigerian girl forced into prostitution by her family, was chosen as a New York Times Editor’s Pick for 2006. His latest novel, The Virgin of Flames, is set in a seedy area of Los Angeles and follows a haunted artist searching for his identity. Abani currently lives in California and teaches creative writing at the University of California, Riverside. 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
...HideGeoff Dyer
2003 Lannan Literary Fellowship
Geoff Dyer was born in Cheltenham, England, in 1958. His many books include But Beautiful, (winner of a Somerset Maugham Prize), Paris Trance, Out of Sheer Rage (a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award), and most recently, Yoga For People Who Can’t Be Bothered To Do It. He lives in London where he spends much of his time wishing he lived in San Francisco.
Geoff Dyer Bio and Cross Links
...HideDeborah Eisenberg
2003 Lannan Literary Fellowship
Deborah Eisenberg is the author of five collections of short stories, All Around Atlantis, The Stories (So Far) of Deborah Eisenberg, Under the 82nd Airborne, Transactions in a Foreign Currency, and the most recent, Twilight of the Super Heroes: Stories. Eisenberg is the recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, a Whiting Writer’s Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and, in 2003, a Lannan Literary Fellowship. She is a professor of Creative Writing at the University of Virginia.
Deborah Eisenberg 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
...HideEdward P. Jones
2003 Lannan Literary Award for Fiction
Edward P. Jones (Fiction) was born in 1950 in Washington, DC. He received a scholarship to Holy Cross College and earned his MFA at the University of Virginia. He has taught fiction at Princeton University, George Mason University, and the University of Maryland. For 19 years, prior to being laid off in early 2002, he worked for a tax analysis firm in Arlington, VA. Following the publication in 1992 of his short story collection, Lost in the City, he won a Lannan Literary Fellowship and a PEN/Hemingway Award and the collection was short-listed for a National Book Award. His first novel, The Known World, published in 2003, is also short-listed for a National Book Award.
Edward P. Jones Bio and Cross Links
...HideAlistair MacLeod
2003 Lannan Literary Award for Fiction
Alistair MacLeod, a native of Canada, was born in1936 and raised in North Battleford, Saskatchewan and Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. He is the author of three collections of short stories, The Lost Salt Gift of Blood, As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories, and Island, which collects in a single volume one new story and all of his previously published short stories.
His first book of fiction, No Great Mischief about a family emigrating from Scotland in 1779, was met with great critical acclaim.
A specialist in British literature of the nineteenth century, MacLeod has been a professor of English and Creative Writing at Windsor University since 1969. He and his family return every summer to Cape Breton where he spends part of his time, “writing in a cliff-top cabin looking west towards Prince Edward Island.”
Alistair MacLeod Bio and Cross Links
...HideJohn McGahern
2003 Lannan Literary Award for Fiction
John McGahern was born in Dublin in 1934 and resides in County Leitrim, Ireland. Generally considered by critics to be one of his country’s greatest living writers, McGahern is the author of five novels, which include the celebrated Amongst Women, published in 1990, and four collections of short stories.
In his most recent novel, By the Lake, he writes of life in a close-knit Irish rural community where, “the days disappear in the attendance of small tasks.” Of McGahern Irish poet and literary critic Seamus Deane says, “At last an Irish author has awakened from the nightmare of history and given us a sense of liberation which is not dependent on flight or emigration or escape.”
John McGahern 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
...HideMary Rakow
2003 Lannan Literary Fellowship
Mary Rakow, a native Californian, has a Masters Degree in Theological Studies from Harvard and a Ph.D. in Theology from Boston College. Her first novel, The Memory Room, was published in 2002. She was awarded a Lannan Literary Fellowship in 2003.
Mary Rakow Bio and Cross Links
...HideRebecca Solnit
2003 Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction
Rebecca Solnit is an activist, historian, and writer who lives in San Francisco. In her most recent book, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster, Solnit surveys disasters from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake to 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, and shows that the typical response to calamity is spontaneous altruism, self-organization, and mutual aid, with neighbors and strangers calmly rescuing, feeding, and housing each other. In her book Wanderlust: A History of Walking, she takes her readers on a leisurely journey through the prehistory, history, and natural history of bipedal motion. Previous publications include Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics; A Field Guide to Getting Lost; As Eve Said to the Serpent: On Landscape, Gender and Art; and River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West (for which she received a Guggenheim and the National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism). A contributing editor to Harper’s, she frequently writes for the political site Tomdispatch.com and occasionally for the London Review of Books and the (U.K.) Guardian. Solnit received a Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction in 2003.
Rebecca Solnit Bio and Cross Links
...HidePeter Dale Scott
2002 Lannan Literary Award for Poetry
Peter Dale Scott was born in Montreal in 1929. His poetry books are the three volumes of his trilogy Seculum: Coming to Jakarta: A Poem About Terror; Listening to the Candle: A Poem on Impulse; and Minding the Darkness: A Poem for the Year 2000. An anti-war speaker during the Vietnam and U.S.-Iraq wars, he was a co-founder of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at the University of California, Berkeley and of the Coalition on Political Assassinations. Mr. Scott lives in Berkeley, California.
Peter Dale Scott Bio and Cross Links
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