Just received this note about our very own Lighthouse short story workshopper Gary Schanbacher's first book:
Dear Mr. Schanbacher,
On behalf of PEN New England, congratulations! I have the pleasure of informing you that your book, “Migration Patterns ”, has been selected as one of two Honorable Mentions for the 2008 Hemingway Foundation/ PEN Award for a first work of fiction.
The Hemingway Foundation/ PEN Award winner this year is Joshua Ferris for “Then We Came To The End”. There were two finalists: Ravi Howard for “Like Trees Walking” and Rebecca Curtis for “Twenty Grand”. Two other books received honorable mention: Margot Singer for "The Pale of Settlement" and your boo k. The judges this year were Ana Castillo, Jennifer Haigh, and Ernest Hebert.
With this honor, Schanbacher gets a one-month residency at Ucross in Wyoming. He'll hardly notice some of us stowed away in his luggage. What an honor, and what a deserving recipient. Buy his book if you haven't yet, folks. You won't be sorry you did!
