Ron Currie wins Young Lions award

As mentioned a few posts ago, Ron Currie was among the finalists for the New York Public Library's Young Lions fiction prize, awarded to promising writers under thirty-five. He faced some stiff competition but prevailed for his debut collection, God Is Dead, and collected a cool 10 grand. Bravo, Ron.

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/awards/ron_currie_jr_nypls_young_literary_lion_of_07_83584.asp?c=rss


I blogged about this book last June: http://reednext.blogspot.com/2007/06/god-is-dead-by-ron-currie-jr.html

Undoubtedly worth buying and reading.

The Young Lions Fiction award

The Young Lions Fiction award nominees have been named:

Ron Currie, Jr. (God Is Dead)
Ellen Litman (The Last Chicken in America)
Peter Nathaniel Malae (Teach the Free Man)
Dinaw Mengestu (The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears)
Emily Mitchell (The Last Summer of the World)

I bring this up because I was impressed with Ron Currie's book that I blogged about last June: http://reednext.blogspot.com/search?q=ron+currie. In my post, I said I believed there was some residual grad school-ness about the book and someone commented "Dude, Ron didn't go to grad school!" Loved that.

Though I haven't read any of the other books, I've heard good things about Litman's and Mengestu's books.

The award ceremony will take place on 4/28/08 and the winner gets $10,000. Oddly, actor Ethan Hawke was a co-founder of the award. While I think it's a wonderful thing and he should be commended, something about Hawke makes me ill.