Literary Awards by Year
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Robert Coover
2000 Lannan Literary Award for Fiction
Robert Coover has been described by The New York Times as, “one of America’s quirkiest writers, if by ‘quirky’ we mean an unwillingness to abide by ordinary fictional rules and a conviction that a novel is primarily a verbal artifact unconvertible to other media.” His novel, The Public Burning, is a long and fantastic fictional account of the events surrounding the executions for espionage of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in 1952, whose principal narrator identifies himself as the then-Vice President of the United States, Richard Milhous Nixon. His other publications include Spanking the Maid, Gerald’s Party, Pinocchio in Venice, and Briar Rose.
Robert Coover Bio and Cross Links
...HideCarl Safina
2000 Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction
Carl Safina is the president of Blue Ocean Institute, whose main focus is using science, art, and literature to inspire a “sea ethic”—a closer relationship with the sea. His first book, Song for the Blue Ocean, takes readers on a global journey of discovery probing for truth about the world’s changing seas, weaving adventure, science and political analysis along the way. His newest book, Voyage of the Turtle, is an impassioned account of the plight of ocean-dwelling turtles. Safina is also author of Eye of the Albatross and co-author of Seafood Lover’s Almanac.
Carl Safina Bio and Cross Links
...HideLeslie Marmon Silko
2000 Lannan Literary Award for Fiction
Leslie Marmon Silko was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, of mixed ancestry — Anglo, Mexican, and Native American — and grew up at Laguna Pueblo. The Pueblo has been home to members of her family for generations and is where she learned traditional stories and legends from female relatives.
She is the author of six books which include poetry, fiction, and essays. In her novel Garden in the Dunes, Silko takes the reader on a grand tour of Europe in the era of Henry James, as seen through the eyes of a young Native American girl, Indigo, who is in flight from the destruction at the hands of the whites of her own tribal world.
Leslie Marmon Silko Bio and Cross Links
...HideLouise Glück
1999 Lannan Literary Award for Poetry
Louise Glück says of writing, “[It] is not decanting of personality. The truth, on the page, need not have been lived. It is, instead, all that can be envisioned.”
Glück was appointed the United States Poet Laureate in 2003. She is the author of numerous books of poetry including The Seven Ages, and The Wild Iris, for which she received the Pulitzer Prize. Her most recent publication is a chapbook called October, identifying with the season of autumn, the dark of it and the beauty of it.
Louise Glück Bio and Cross Links
...HideGish Jen
1999 Lannan Literary Award for Fiction
Gish Jen has published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, The Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times, among other periodicals, as well as in numerous textbooks and anthologies, including The Best American Short Stories of the Century, edited by John Updike.
Jen has received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Fulbright Program, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and currently holds a Strauss Living from The American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1999 she was awarded the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction.
She has published three novels. Her first book, Typical American (Houghton Mifflin, 1991), was a finalist for the National Book Critics’ Circle Award. Its sequel, Mona in the Promised Land (Knopf, 1996), was named one of the ten best books of 1996 by The Los Angeles Times. Her third novel is called The Love Wife. A story collection, Who’s Irish?, was published by Knopf in 1999. All of her books have been New York Times notable books.
...HideJamaica Kincaid
1999 Lannan Literary Award for Fiction
Jamaica Kincaid was born and raised in Antigua, West Indies. She is the author of My Brother, a memoir of her relationship with her brother who died of AIDS, which was nominated for the National Book Award.
She has also written three novels, The Autobiography of My Mother, Lucy, and Annie John, and a collection of stories, At the Bottom of the River. Critic Michiko Kakutani has said, “She writes with passion and conviction, and she also writes with a musical sense of language, a poet’s understanding of how politics and history, private and public events, overlap and blur.”
She lives in Bennington, Vermont, with her family.
Jamaica Kincaid Bio and Cross Links
...HideDennis O'Driscoll
1999 Lannan Literary Award for Poetry
Dennis O’Driscoll, one of Ireland’s most widely published and respected critics of poetry, was born in County Tipperary, Ireland. A civil servant since the age of 16, he works for Irish Customs in Dublin.
He has published six collections of poetry, the most recent being Exemplary Damages. He has contributed to the Times Literary Supplement, Poetry, and the Harvard Review. O’Driscoll, who received a Lannan Literary Award for Poetry in 1999, was a featured author for Readings & Conversations in 2001 and 2003.
Dennis O'Driscoll Bio and Cross Links
...HideRichard Powers
1999 Lannan Literary Award for Fiction
Richard Powers has said, “fiction can travel anywhere, and probably should.” He is the author of nine novels that explore connections among disparate disciplines such as photography, artificial intelligence, music composition, molecular biology, game theory, and American business. His recent novel, The Echo Maker, which won the 2006 National Book Award, is a gripping mystery that explores the improvised human self and the even more precarious brain that splits us from and joins us to the rest of creation. His other novels include Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, Prisoner’s Dilemma, The Gold Bug Variations, Operation Wandering Soul, Galatea 2.2, Gain, Plowing the Dark, and The Time of Our Singing. He has been called one of the greatest American novelists of his generation.
Richard Powers Bio and Cross Links
...HideAdrienne Rich
1999 Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award
Adrienne Rich received the Yale Younger Poets Award in 1951 (from judge W. H. Auden), at the age of 21, and with strength and conviction has not stopped writing since in her distinct voice. Rich has said that her poetry seeks to create a dialectical relationship between “the personal, or lyric voice, and the so-called political—really, the voice of the individual speaking not just to herself, or to a beloved friend, but to and from a collective, a social realm.” Her National Book Critics’ Circle Award citation explains: “Rich has captured with subversive wit, compassion, precision, supple poetics, toughness and yes, opposition and resistance, what life has been like in the opening years of a new century.” She is the author of more than sixteen volumes of poetry, including, Diving into the Wreck, The Dream of a Common Language, The Fact of a Doorframe: Selected Poems 1950—2001, An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems 1988—1991, Dark Fields of the Republic: Poems 1991—1995, Midnight Salvage, Fox, and The School Among the Ruins, as well as the prose book Of Woman Born. Rich’s newest book of poems is Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth (2007). Her new collection of essays, A Human Eye: Essays on Art in Society, was published in May 2009. Adrienne Rich received a Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999.
Adrienne Rich Bio and Cross Links
...HideJonathan Schell
1999 Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction
Jonathan Schell is the author of 13 books, the most recent being The Seventh Decade: The New Shape of the Nuclear Danger. He was a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine from 1967 to 1987 and is now a visiting lecturer at Yale University. Schell’s other books include The Fate of the Earth, which first appeared in three parts in The New Yorker, became a bestseller and was hailed by The New York Times as “an event of profound historical moment,” and The Unconquerable World, which the Times called “the most impressive argument ever made that there exists a viable and desirable alternative to a continued reliance on war.”
Jonathan Schell Bio and Cross Links
...HideJoanna Scott
1999 Lannan Literary Award for Fiction
Joanna Scott, a professor of English at the University of Rochester, is the author of six novels including Tourmaline, The Manikin, and a short story collection, Various Antidotes. She has received a MacArthur Fellowship and a Lannan Literary Award for Fiction.
The Chicago Tribune notes, “Scott is a thoughtful storyteller, armed with a technical expertise…[she] has an intuitive understanding of the complicated dance between literature and life.”
Joanna Scott Bio and Cross Links
...HideC.D. Wright
1999 Lannan Literary Award for Poetry
C.D. Wright can be described in many ways: she is an experimental writer, a Southern writer, and a socially committed writer, yet she continuously reinvents herself with each new volume. Much of her poetry is rooted in the landscape and people of her childhood in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas.
She has written ten volumes of poetry and recently published Cooling Time, a book comprised of poetry, memoir and essay. In it she writes, “Many writers maintain a guarded border between language thick with hair and twigs and the reified, rarified stuff. No matter which side of the border poets live on, they tend to act as if they were being overrun. All I want is a day pass. I like to sleep in my own bed.” A recipient of a Lannan Literary Award and a MacArthur Fellowship, Wright is a professor of English at Brown University. With her husband, poet Forrest Gander, she edits Lost Roads Publishers.
C.D. Wright Bio and Cross Links
...HideMary Oliver
1998 Lannan Literary Award for Poetry
Mary Oliver’s poetry, with her lyrical connection to the natural world, has firmly established her in the highest realm of American poets. She is renowned for her evocative and precise imagery, which brings nature into clear focus, transforming the everyday world into a place of magic and discovery. Her recent books include Owls and Other Fantasies, Why I Wake Early, and New and Selected Poems, Volume Two. As poet Stanley Kunitz has said, “Mary Oliver’s poetry is fine and deep; it reads like a blessing.” Oliver lives in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
Mary Oliver Bio and Cross Links
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