Boston, MA, John F Kennedy Presidential Library, Sunday March 30, the 2008 PEN/Hemingway Award
In the early spring of that year we sat in the auditorium and looked across the bay to the city. On the shore there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and blue in the shipping channel. On the podium, Patrick Hemingway stood and read aloud and it was a fine reading, clear and strong, and the sun sparkled off the water, and…..
Sorry, I got a little caught up in the moment. In truth, being just a bit of a cynic (in a healthy, good natured way) I feared Poppa’s son reading from the opening to A Farewell to Arms might come off as hokum. But his voice really was clear and strong, and the audience of between 300 and 400 did get caught up in the cadence and rhythm of the piece.
Sherri and I were in Boston over the weekend of March 30th to attend the 2008 Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for “distinguished first works of fiction,” and for the L.L.Winship/PEN New England Awards (kind of like our Colorado Book Awards). My book, Migration Patterns, was selected an Honorable Mention, and we had Mileage Plus credits stacked up, and what better excuse to visit a great city? The ceremony was held at the JFK Presidential Library overlooking the bay and the city skyline.
The ceremony itself featured short readings not only by Patrick Hemingway but also by Joshua Ferris and the poet Ann Killough, winner of the L.L. Winship poetry award, and a feisty, short (yea!!) keynote by Alice Hoffman. But the real fun of the weekend was in attending the Saturday night reception at Beacon Press (see pic below) in the heart of the Beacon Hill district, about a block from the state capital, and the
small private reception before the award ceremony where we got a chance to meet the other writers, editors, PEN people and judges.
I had a chance only for a quick hello to the winner, Joshua Ferris, since he could not make the Saturday evening reception, and at the ceremony he was obviously the center of attention. But it is no surprise his book Then We Came to the End won. After all, he is a MFA from UC Irvine and had our own Amanda Rea to help him hone his craft, and, well, TWCTTE was a finalist for THE National Book Award. Plus, he has by far the most high tech website.
I ran (almost literally) into Rebecca Curtis, a creative writing instructor at Columbia whose Twenty Grand was one of the finalists, but I never got to say hello because she was always occupied and I didn’t want to interrupt. Again, I’m not surprised she was a finalist. Two of the stories in her collection I recognized as having first read in the New Yorker… so there you go.
I was most impressed with books by two writers I knew least about, but got to meet and chat with both days of the event. Ravi Howard, an MFA from University of Virginia, was a finalist for his powerful, riveting novel Like Trees Walking, based on the true story of a lynching that took place in Mobile in 1981 (yes folks, that’s 1981, not 1881).
And, finally, I was astounded by the craft of Margot Singer in her book of linked stories, The Pale of Settlement, the other Honorable Mention. She has a PhD from the University of Utah and is a professor at Denison. Obviously, I was not the only person astounded by her book, as it was this year’s Flannery O’Connor Award winner for short fiction. Check this one out; I’d be interested to hear your opinion.
After the ceremony there was a public reception in the atrium of the library, where I talked a little with two of the three judges, both very encouraging and complimentary.
Jennifer Haigh has the distinction of being a past winner of both the Hemingway/PEN and the L.L.Winship Awards, so she was kind of like a celebrity. We got to talking about my entering the writing life a little later than some, and she mentioned William Gay, which set me off since he’s one of my favorites. Turns out we both have been known to give away copies of his I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down. Jennifer is on my “to read” list.
Also on my “to read” list is the other judge I met, Ernest Hebert. He teaches at Dartmouth and has published eight novels, the most recent being, The Old American, a title that resonates with me. He offered a really encouraging remark to the effect that judging is such a demanding effort, so many books to plow through, and then he comes to one like those being recognized and he understands why he does it.
His comment made my day. And what also made my day was feeling that in some way I represented Lighthouse Writers Workshop at the event, and other independent writing programs that are doing so much to support the arts and to encourage our creativity. Now, that might come off as hokum, especially from a mild cynic, but it’s true.
--Gary Schanbacher, on assignment from Boston
