Even though winter-like weather keeps springing back, there’s still the annual flurry of literary prizes to serve as reminders that this is the season for tossing bouquets (and cash) at authors. Among this spring’s more nationally prominent winners of awards are Richard Ford, Isabel Allende and the late Stanley Elkin.
Strictly on a monetary basis, it was a poet who took home the grandest prize. Gerald Stern, whose ninth and latest collection is called “Odd Mercy,” won the $75,000 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Sponsored by the Modern Poetry Association and Poetry magazine, the award was funded by Ruth Lilly, an Indianapolis philanthropist, in 1986 to “honor a U.S. poet whose accomplishments warrant extraordinary recognition.”
Of the fiction writers, the big winner was Ford, who collected not only the Pulitzer Prize, worth $3,000, but also the $15,000 PEN/Faulkner Award for “Independence Day,” his ruminative novel about a reformed sportswriter who’s turned to selling real estate.
Ford was also one of five finalists in the judging by board members of the National Book Critics Circle; the group’s annual prize in fiction went to Elkin for his novel “Mrs. Ted Bliss.” The 65-year-old Elkin, who lived in St. Louis, died last May.
In the other four categories, the NBCC, an organization of editors and authors as well as professional reviewers, gave their prizes to: Jonathan Harr in non-fiction for “A Civil Action”; Robert Polito for his biography of pulp novelist Jim Thompson, “Savage Art”; William Matthews in poetry for “Time & Money”; and Robert Darnton in criticism for “The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France.”
While the NBCC awards bring the authors only prestige and public recognition, most of the others, like the Lilly, Pulitzer and PEN/Faulkner, reward them with cash as well. In addition to co-sponsoring its Faulkner prize, PEN (an acronym for an international consortium of poets, playwrights, editors, essayists and novelists) also joins the Hemingway Foundation in giving a $7,500 award for first fiction.
This year’s PEN/Hemingway award went to Chang-rae Lee for his “Native Speaker,” about the tribulations of a Korean family living in New York. Among the other winners of PEN awards were Mary Karr, who received the $1,000 first non-fiction prize for her memoir “The Liars’ Club”; Franz Wright, a $5,000 career achievement award in poetry; and Thomas Nagel, $5,000 for his collection of essays “Other Minds.
Like those of Hemingway and Faulkner, the achievements of Robert F. Kennedy have been memorialized with a book prize (as well as journalism awards) in his name. The recipients of the 16th annual, $2,500 RFK Book Awards are Pete Earley for “Circumstantial Evidence,” the story of an Alabama murder case; and Dan Carter for “The Politics of Rage,” about the evolution of former Alabama Gov. George Wallace’s segregationist politics.
The American Academy of Arts and Letters bestowed $200,000 on more than a dozen writers. Among the former were Whitney Balliett, Robert Hughes and David Quammen, each of whom received $7,500 for exceptional accomplishment, while David Long was awarded $5,000 for his story collection “Blue Spruce”; Peter Landesman, $2,500 for his first novel, “The Raven”; and A.J. Verdelle, $5,000 for her first novel, “The Good Negress.”
The yearly Rea Award is given by New York’s Dungannon Foundation for significant contributions in short fiction, but the $30,000 that goes along with it is among the literary industry’s larger purses. This year it went to Andre Dubus, whose seventh and latest collection is “Dancing After Hours.”
On the homefront, the Harold Washington Literary Award goes to Isabel Allende, a journalist and novelist (“House of the Spirits”).
Named for the late mayor, the $5,000 award, will be given to Allende on May 30 at a $250-a-plate dinner in the Winter Garden of the Washington Library, 400 S. State St. She joins a club whose membership includes Saul Bellow, Ray Bradbury, Garry Wills and Gwendolyn Brooks, to name a few previous winners of the award, inaugurated in 1989 by the Chicago Public Library and the Printers Row Book Fair.
More out of economic necessity than choice, two venerable Chicago literary groups have pooled their prize-giving resources: the Society of Midland Authors and the Friends of Literature will jointly give their annual awards to three authors at a dinner May 21 at the 410 Club in the Wrigley Building.
Combined prizes of $350 each go to Clint McCown in fiction for his novel “The Member Guest”; Diane Dufva Quantic in non-fiction for “The Nature of Place”; and Allison Funk in poetry for her collection “Living at the Epicenter.”
In addition, the Midland Authors will award $350 prizes to six writers in four other categories: Patricia Willis in children’s fiction for “Out of the Storm”; Mary Hoff and Mary M. Rodgers in children’s non-fiction for “Our Endangered Planet”; Jack and Rochelle Sutin in autobiography for “Jack and Rochelle: A Holocaust Story of Love and Resistance”; and Stephen P. Daly in drama for “lifeidreamedof.”
Rounding out the Midland Authors honors, a lifetime achievement award will go to Martin E. Marty, the eminent University of Chicago theologian and author of more than 40 books, while Penelope Mesic, a frequent contributor to the Tribune, will receive the James Friend Memorial Award for criticism.
Another long-established Chicago literary group, the Friends of American Writers, divided $4,200 among four authors at its April awards luncheon: David Haynes won the $1,600 prize in adult literature for his novel “Somebody Else’s Mama.” Winner of the $1,000 second prize was Josip Novakovich for his book of essays “Apricots From Chernobyl.”
In the juvenile books category, the $1,000 winner was Elizabeth Alder for her novel “The King’s Shadow,” with Patricia Willis the $600 runner up for her novel “Out of the Storm.”
