Posts Tagged‘Awards and Prizes’

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Notes from Around the Web/Twitter

by Erika Dreifus on
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Adam Kirsch writes about the newly-translated biography of Irène Némirovsky.
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Despite efforts to prevent it from happening, a literary prize goes to Amos Oz. (via MassWriter)
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In the Forward, Benjamin Ivry reports: “One of France’s most daring postwar writers, perhaps best known for writing an entire novel without the letter ‘e’ (a lipogram), French-Jewish author Georges Perec, is coming back into vogue. Two of his books were reprinted by publisher David R. Godine last year, and new interest is being taken in his Polish-Jewish roots.”
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Another name that comes up in Ivry’s article is that of another French-Jewish writer, Patrick Modiano, who recently won the Prix mondial de la Fondation Simone et Cino del Duca, which is worth €300,000.
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Quite a lively interview with Gary Shteyngart here. (via the Jewish Book Council)
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Sholom Aleichem’s granddaughter turns 99.
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The death of Chaim Grade’s widow may signal the rebirth of the writer’s works and reputation.
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Congratulations to Joanna Smith Rakoff, winner of the 2010 Goldberg Prize for Jewish Fiction by Emerging Writers for her novel, A Fortunate Age.

Moment Magazine’s Emerging Writer Awards Announced

by Erika Dreifus on
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Founded in 2004, Moment Magazine‘s Emerging Writer Awards “recognize talented writers who have published at least one book and whose books confront themes that are of interest to Jewish readers. An emerging writer is defined as someone of any age who has not yet received widespread recognition and has not yet won a major literary award.” Selections are made by committee (there is no published nomination process).

Congratulations to this year’s awardees: Abby Sher (nonfiction winner), for Amen, Amen, Amen: Memoir of a Girl Who Couldn’t Stop Praying; and Sara Houghteling (fiction winner), for Pictures at an Exhibition.

"The Confessions of Noa Weber" Wins Best Translated Book Award

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

Given my enthusiasm for The Confessions of Noa Weber, a novel by Gail Hareven translated from the Hebrew by Dalya Bilu, it’s no surprise that I was delighted to hear this news: The book has won this year’s Best Translated Book Award for fiction. Congratulations to Hareven and Bilu (and the U.S. publisher, Melville House) on jobs very well done!

Coming Soon: American Academy in Jerusalem

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

From the Foundation for Jewish Culture:

“Mishkenot Sha’ananim and the Foundation for Jewish Culture are collaborating on the creation of an institute at Mishkenot, modeled after the successful American Academies in Rome and Berlin. Groups of distinguished artists and scholars, leading experts in their fields, will be in residence at Mishkenot for two ot three month periods. They will work on projects inspired by Jerusalem and connect with cultural and academic institutions, thereby enriching the city’s cultural discourse. We expect they will return home with new connections and share their appreciation of the rich diversity and potential of this extraordinary city.

We are currently planning a pilot mini-residency for June 2010, which will include literary artists Jonathan Safran Foer and Nicole Krauss, urban planner Joshua Sirefman, and theater artist TBA. The selection process for the full residency will be by nomination. Details will be provided after the pilot residency is complete.

Initial research support for this initiative was provided by the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, and support for the pilot residency has been provided by the Bracha Foundation.”

Very exciting news! I just hope that the residencies will be open to those of us who are slightly less well-known than Jonathan Safran Foer and Nicole Krauss!

Congratulations to Kevin Haworth

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

Warm congratulations to Kevin Haworth, who recently won the Lawrence Foundation Prize, an annual $1,000 award by the editorial board of Michigan Quarterly Review to the author of the “best short story” published in the journal that year. Kevin’s winning story, “The Scribe,” appeared in the fall 2009 issue. “The Scribe” features as its narrator-protagonist a self-described “sofer, a writer of the sacred letters of the Torah,” and the travails of his job.

As you may recall, Kevin is a past winner of the Goldberg Prize for Jewish Fiction by Emerging Writers. In 2006, I had the pleasure of interviewing Kevin about that prize and his novel, The Discontinuity of Small Things.

MQR is by no means a specifically “Jewish” literary journal, which reminds us of an important point I brought up about a year ago at the Jewish Fiction Writers’ Conference: As wonderful and welcoming as Jewish-focused publications can be, writing on Jewish subjects can be placed in many different venues.