Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Book Prize Two for One

Two more of our esteemed colleagues have good cause to celebrate as of late.  Both Mary Ann Samyn and Mark Brazaitis have won prestigious book prizes.  Read on, and join in the celebration.
2012 FIELD POETRY PRIZE

Oberlin College Press is pleased to announce that the winner of the 2012 FIELD Poetry Prize is Mary Ann Samyn of Morgantown, West Virginia. In addition to receiving the prize of $1000, her prize-winning manuscript, My Life in Heaven, will be published in the FIELD Poetry Series in the spring of 2013.

The FIELD Prize was judged by the editors of the Press, David Young and David Walker. “We had an exceptionally strong pool of entrants this year, including roughly a dozen books we would have been happy to publish,” says Walker. “But we kept coming back to Mary Ann Samyn’s manuscript, which is striking in its subtlety, complexity, and utterly distinctive voice. Even readers who know Samyn’s earlier books will be dazzled by the wit and incisiveness of My Life in Heaven. We were moved and excited by it, and feel fortunate to be able to add it to our list.”
2012 GIVAL PRESS NOVEL AWARD

Mark Brazaitis of Morgantown, West Virginia has won the 8th Annual Gival Press Novel Award for his novel Julia & Rodrigo. Brazaitis will receive $3,000.00 and his novel will be published in 2013. 

Advance Praise:
“This expressive, touching and at times wrenching novel tells the stories of two young people living in Guatemala during that country’s civil war. Teenagers Julia García and Rodrigo Rax meet at a school pageant and find that they are drawn to each other. Julia, the daughter of an engineer, lives in one of the few two-story houses in town. Rodrigo, who comes from less privilege, is a soccer star. But what begins as a love story soon becomes a struggle against circumstance. Julia and Rodrigo rise above old-fashioned customs of marriage and religious worship only to collide with events they cannot control. Ultimately, this finely crafted novel goes a long way toward answering the question of whether human free will can overcome fate, or God’s will.” —Thaddeus Rutkowski, final judge of the contest and author of Haywire, Tetched and Roughhouse

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