News

An interview with me recently appeared in Dark Sky Magazine.  To read the interview, follow this link.  To learn more about Dark Sky Magazine, follow this link.  Thanks to Ethel Rohan for doing this great interview series.  You can follow Ethel’s blog at www.ethelrohan.com.

Last week, I was thrilled to learn that THE BIGNESS OF THE WORLD made it onto the shortlist for the fourth William Saroyan International Prize for Writing.  Stanford University Libraries announced the list last Friday.  The prize is awarded by the William Saroyan Foundation and Stanford University Libraries.  Winners will be announced this summer.

On April 29, at a ceremony in New York that I was not able to attend, THE BIGNESS OF THE WORLD received The Publishing  Triangle’s Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction.  I’m deeply honored to be chosen for this award.  To learn more about The Publishing Triangle and the night’s other award recipients, go here.

The Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize recently announced its longlist of 57 collections from around the world.  I’m very pleased to report that THE BIGNESS OF THE WORLD was on this list, which includes collections from the UK, India, Canada, and Singapore, among other places.  To learn more about the award, go here.

On Tuesday, April 20th, I learned that BIGNESS was chosen as the Gold Medal winner of the California Book Award for First Fiction.  In its 79th year, the CA Book Awards are sponsored by the Commonwealth Club.  The award ceremony will be held on June 3 at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco.  To see the other winners in the areas of Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, go here.

The Commonwealth Club recently released its list of finalists for the California Book Awards.  I was very excited to see THE BIGNESS OF THE WORLD included on the list of finalists for First Fiction along with some great books.  The winner will be announced April 19, 2010.

The day after I learned about the Lambda, I received news that BIGNESS was also one of three finalists for the Publishing Triangle’s Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction, which “celebrates the future of lesbian and gay literature by awarding a prize to an outstanding first novel or story collection.”  To learn more about the Publishing Triangle and to see a list of the other awards and finalists, go here.

BIGNESS is one of five finalists for a Lambda Literary Award in Debut Fiction.  The winner will be announced at the 22nd Annual Lambda Literary Award ceremony in NY on Thursday, May 27, 2010.   Barb Johnson’s MORE OF THIS WORLD OR MAYBE ANOTHER is also a finalist–and a great book.  For a list of all of the finalists and information about the Lambda ceremony, go here.

For 25 years, I’ve been reading, faithfully, the series BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES.  Recently, I learned from Heidi Pitlor, the series editor, that Richard Russo, whom I’ve also been reading for many years (my favorite is Nobody’s Fool), chose my story “All Boy” for inclusion in the 2010 BASS.  “All Boy,” which first appeared in New England Review, is the final story in THE BIGNESS OF THE WORLD.  It’s been a month of wonderful news.

My story “Idyllic Little Bali,” which first ran in Prairie Schooner in Summer 2009, recently won the Lawrence Foundation Award, an award with a cash prize of $1000 (yay!), given to a short story published in Prairie Schooner during the previous year.  I’m honored to be the recipient.  To read about my award and the recipients of other awards given by Prairie Schooner, go to their news post here.  Thank you to Prairie Schooner for publishing the story and selecting it for this award as well as to the Lawrence Foundation for making this award possible.