Congratulations to Western North Carolina author Ron Rash, who won a nice award today for his novel Serena. From the Asheville Citizen-Times, via their new blog partner, the Southern Highland Reader:
Ron Rash, the Parris Distinguished Professor of Appalachian Culture at Western Carolina University, is recipient of the 2009 Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction for his fourth novel, “Serena.”
The award is presented annually by the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association in recognition of works of fiction that exhibit “creative and imaginative quality, excellence of style, universality of appeal, and relevance to North Carolina and her people.”“Serena” tells the story of timber baron George Pemberton and his ruthless wife, Serena, who come to the North Carolina mountains to create a timber empire.
That’s great, but I’m already on to the next. Rash will have a new book of short stories next year, as noted in this Raleigh News & Observer story about the resurgance of the short story:
Then in September, Oprah Winfrey selected African writer Uwem Akpan’s short story collection “Say You’re One of Them,” her first book club selection in more than a year, and the first time she has chosen short fiction rather than a novel.
Meanwhile, two short story collections have made the finalist list for the 2009 National Book Award: Bonnie Jo Campbell’s “American Salvage,” and Daniyal Mueenuddin’s “In Other Rooms, Other Wonders.”
Do these high-profile events presage a renaissance for short fiction?
“It’s a nice idea,” Southern fiction superstar Lee Smith said in a recent phone interview. “Never before in this country have we had so many truly extraordinary short story writers.”
Indeed, local writers continue to turn out well-received short fiction collections. This year, The N&O has reviewed Nic Brown’s “Floodmarkers” and Jill McCorkle’s “Going Away Shoes.” UNC’s Marianne Gingher edited an anthology of “flash” (fewer than 1,800 words) fiction, “Long Story Short,” catering to super-short attention spans, while Chapel Hill resident Wells Tower’s collection “Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned” took Manhattan literati by storm.
Next year promises much, too: Smith comes out with “Mrs. Darcy Meets the Blue-Eyed Stranger,” and the brilliant Ron Rash with “Burning Bright,” which Smith describes as “what Cormac McCarthy would write if he wrote short stories.”
But Smith is hardly sanguine about the fate of literature in the Internet age. “Everybody’s so busy communicating with each other — Facebooking, Twittering, telling each other their stories — that they don’t have any time to read,” she says.
I can’t wait!