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New: Web cast of 2008 awards event (Added 5/18/2009)
Cited for his craft and his empathy, popular short story writer Wolff takes home the $20,000 Story Prize for Our Story Begins.
On Wednesday night, shortly after reading from his well-known story “Bullet in the Brain,” Tobias Wolff was called back to the stage of the New School’s Tishman Auditorium to accept The Story Prize. The other two finalists were Jhumpa Lahiri’s best-selling Unaccustomed Earth (Knopf) and Joe Meno’s Demons in the Spring (Akashic Books). At the event, all three authors read from their books and discussed their work with Larry Dark, the Director of The Story Prize, before Founder Julie Lindsey announced the winner at the end of the program. The $20,000 award Wolff received, in addition to an engraved silver bowl, is the largest first-prize amount of any annual U.S. book award for fiction. Lahiri and Meno, each received $5,000.
Judges Daniel Menaker, Rick Simonson, and Hannah Tinti cited Wolff’s work for its sense of detail and its humanity: “The previously uncollected pieces by Wolff in this new collection show an increasingly severe insistence on the most telling and specific detail as the author creates entire worlds, entire life stories, out of eloquent molecules of narrative. The emotional impact of these lapidary stories is specific and powerful.” They went on to say: “It is this great sense of the human condition, combined with the close detailing of everyday life that makes Tobias Wolff such an exceptional writer. He deserves The Story Prize, not only for his early work showcased in Our Story Begins, that many of us have studied and read and learned from in the past, but for the ten new stories included, that show he is still at the top of his game.”
For more on The Story Prize, go to TSP, the official blog of The Story Prize, at www.thestoryprize.blogspot.com, or follow us at www.twitter.com/lcdark.
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