Newspapers and books share a special transformative power, and every fall, in celebration of that bond, the Chicago Tribune presents its Literary Prizes, which honor the best in literature–from emerging writers to those who have received luminous international praise.
We are proud to announce the winners of the 2006 Nelson Algren Awards for short fiction. First prize goes to “Jerry Morgenthayer, Orem, Utah,” by Rick Craig. Runners-up are “Road to Damascus,” by Heather Brittain Bergstrom; “Broken Strings,” by Rose Hamilton-Gottlieb; and “The Geometry of Despair,” by David James Poissant. About 2,000 stories were submitted to the contest, and the final selections were made by three distinguished fiction writers: Kevin Baker (“Paradise Alley”), Sarah Shun-lien Bynum (“Madeleine Is Sleeping”) and Valerie Martin (“Mary Reilly”).
The Chicago Tribune Literary Prize for a lifetime of great achievement will be bestowed upon Joyce Carol Oates, the prolific and powerful writer of such novels as “Them” and “We Were the Mulvaneys” and such works of non-fiction as “On Boxing.” Winners of the Tribune’s Heartland Prizes are Taylor Branch, for “At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years 1965-1968” (non-fiction), and Louise Erdrich, for “The Painted Drum” (fiction). All three are featured in today’s Chicago Tribune Magazine.
The newspaper does not overlook the next generation of great readers, and for that audience, the Young Adult Book Prize is awarded to Kate DiCamillo, who has won legions of fans with books including “Because of Winn-Dixie” and “The Tiger Rising.”
Elizabeth Taylor, literary editor
