Author Archives: Kaukonen

Pulitzer Prize Winners Announced

The 90th annual Pulitzer Prizes in Journalism, Letters, Drama and Music, awarded on the recommendation of the Pulitzer Prize Board, have been announced by Columbia University.

In fiction, Geraldine Brooks received the Pulitzer Prize for her novel, March (Viking), which imagines the Civil War experiences of Mr. Peter March, the absent father in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. It should not be confused with The March, by E.L. Doctrow (Random House), also a Civil War novel and also a finalist for the prize. The third finalist was Lee Martin‘s The Bright Forever (Shaye Areheart Books/Crown Publishing).

The award in poetry went to Late Wife (Louisiana State UP), by Claudia Emerson. In the book, “a woman explores her disappearance from one life and reappearance in another as she addresses her former husband, herself, and her new husband in a series of epistolary poems.” Other finalists included American Sublime, by Elizabeth Alexander (Graywolf Press), and Elegy on Toy Piano, by Dean Young (University of Pittsburgh Press).

Once again this year–for the 15th time (though only the second time in the past 20 years)–no winner was selected in drama. Nominated as finalists in this category were: Miss Witherspoon, by Christopher Durang; The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow, by Rolin Jones; and Red Light Winter, by Adam Rapp.

Penguin Classics & the NBA

We can admit that when we think of the National Basketball Association we don’t exactly think “classic literature”–unless, of course, you count Wilt Chamberlain’s autobiography or Dennis Rodman’s tattoos. But both the NBA and Penguin Classics share this in common–they were launched in 1946 and this year they’re celebrating 60 years in the business. So the NBA and Penguin are conducting a joint advertising campaign to encourage people to “Aim High. Live Classic.” (First, there were throwback jerseys; will we now have throwback novels?)

The ad campaign will feature stars of the NBA (and the Women’s National Basketball Association), current and former, such as Dwayne Wade, Ray Allen, and Magic Johnson, pictured reading from their favorite Penguin Classics. Magic’s choice? Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Wade? Pride and Prejudice. Yes, that Pride and Prejudice. “Reading the classics,” says Wade, “is like opening a door to a world that at first looks so different from mine but, when I look closer, is filled with people who struggle with the same things I do.”

In an article in The New York Times, Kathy Behrens, senior vice president for NBA community and player programs in New York explains that the “term ‘old-school’ has become a compliment rather than a putdown, representing a real and authentic life style worth emulating.”

So put down that Candace Bushnell. Trade in that James Frey. Get yourself some Melville or Hawthorne, or maybe a little Kate Chopin and Henry James. It’s what all the kids will be sporting next season.

Jeffrey E. Smith Editors' Prize Reception

Please join us Saturday, April 29, at the Upper Crust in downtown Columbia for the Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize Reception and Reading, beginning at 6:30 p.m. The three winners of our annual contest–Joanna Luloff, of Boston, Mass. (fiction); Erica Bleeg, of Portland, Maine (essay); and Derek Mong, of Ann Arbor, Mich. (poetry)–will be honored with a reception and will receive their prize-money ($3000 each). Additionally, each writer will read from his or her work. There will be free wine and hors d’oeuvres and wonderful literary conversations!

AWP Conference

Stephanie Carpenter; Speer Morgan; Edward Falco, author of Sabbath Night in the Church of the Pirhana; Greg Michaelson, Unbridled Books

Thank you to all of those who stopped by our bookfair table at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs’ (AWP) Conference in Austin, Texas, earlier this month. We gave away several hundred copies of the magazine, temporary tattoos, mini-notebooks, and an iPod Shuffle. The winner of the iPod Shuffle? Brian Evans of Wichita, Kansas. Congratulations, Brian.

Greg Michaelson, Unbridled Books; Richard Sowienski; David Hamilton, Iowa Review; Speer Morgan, Howard Junker, Zyzzyva

The Missouri Review was well represented at the conference. Speer Morgan participated in a panel on the question of a renaissance among literary journals, a panel that also included Bret Lott from the Southern Review, T.R. Hummer from the Georgia Review, Ted Genoways from the Virginia Quarterly Review, and David Lynn from the Kenyon Review. TMR alum Anthony Varallo and current TMR intern Emily Rosko shared the stage as well, at a reading celebrating this past year’s winners of the Iowa Awards from University of Iowa Press. Varallo read from his collection of short stories, This Day in History, while Rosko read from her debut-collection of poetry, Raw Goods Inventory.

Stephanie Carpenter; Michael Kardos; Anthony Varallo

Various TMR staff members and interns helped to take care of business at the bookfair table, including Speer Morgan, Kris Somerville, Evelyn Somers, Dedra Earl, Jason Koo, Scott Kaukonen, Michael Kardos, Michael Piafsky, Stephanie Carpenter, and Jessica Garratt. We had the opportunity to meet many of you, to chat with our authors, and to touch base with some of our own alumni including Hoa Ngo, Tina Hall, and John Tait. We look forward to seeing everyone again next year in Atlanta.

More News from Past Contributors

Eric Puchner, whose short story, “Diablo,” appeared in TMR 26:3 (2003), will publish his debut collection, Music Through the Floor, with Scribner. Puchner, who earned his MFA from the University of Arizona and who was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, has also published stories in Zoetrope: All-Story, the Chicago Tribune, Glimmer Train, and Best New American Voices 2005. Of Puchner’s work, Charles Baxter writes, “This is the most auspicious debut of a short story collection that I have encountered in years. Eric Puchner is a master of the perfect phrase and the perfect detail, and his stories are exceptionally wide-ranging in subject and tone . . . . The writing is at all times smart and emotionally courageous. Writers like Erich Puchner are keeping the short story form alive . . .”

News from Past Contributors

Tim Bascom’s memoir Chameleon Days: An American Boyhood in Ethiopia will be published in June by Mariner Books. In the foreword, Edward Hoagland calls the book “a tale well-grounded in a little boy’s close-grained focus on apprehensive innocence and vulnerability.” Tim was the Editors’ Prize winner in essay in 2004, and the memoir includes his winning piece “A Vocabulary For My Senses.”

In May, Norton will publish The Cottagers, a literary suspense novel by Marshall Klimasewiski, whose short story, “The Last Time I Saw Richard,” appeared in TMR 19:3 (1996). Klimasewiski teaches at Washington University in St. Louis.

In August, Norton will publish A Pickpocket’s Tale: The Underword of Nineteenth-Century New York, by Timothy Gilfoyle. It is a historical account of a con man named George Appo; an excerpt from the book in progress appeared as a Found Text in TMR 16:3 (1993). Gilfoyle is professor of American history at Loyola University Chicago.

Additionally, the Pitt Poetry Series just published David Wojahn’s collection Interrogation Palace: New and Selected Poems 1982-2004. Wojahn has previously contributed both poetry and nonfiction to TMR, most recently, “Generations ‘I’: The Future of Autobiographical Poetry,” in TMR 19:2 (1996). Wojahn is professor of English and director of creative writing at Virginia Commonwealth University.