Western North Carolina writer Ron Rash was named a finalist for the prestigious PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction. Here’s the story:
Kate Christensen has won the 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction for her novel “The Great Man,” whose ironic title refers to a recently deceased painter but whose focus is on the women in his life.
“They’re vibrant, curious, eccentric and fresh,” said Molly Giles, one of the three judges who picked Christensen’s novel out of around 350 submissions.
Among many books by better-known writers, said Victor LaValle, another judge, hers was one “I kept coming back to again and again.”
The four other finalists were:
David Leavitt for his novel “The Indian Clerk,” based on the real-life connection between an eminent English academic and a poor, untrained man from Madras with a mind capable of expanding the horizons of mathematics.
T.M. McNally for “The Gateway: Stories,” a collection described by writer David Shields as “uncommonly dense, complex and well-made.”
Ron Rash for “Chemistry and Other Stories,” set in Appalachia and called “flawless” by PEN/Faulkner judge Giles.
Christensen will receive $15,000 and each finalist will receive $5,000. The five authors will be honored at a ceremony at the Folger Shakespeare Library on May 10.
“The Great Man” is Christensen’s fourth novel, and while she hasn’t gone unnoticed, she’s had to shake off the fact that her first got pegged as “chick lit” when it appeared in 1999.
“It gave me something to prove,” she said.