Prairie Schooner and the University of Nebraska Press announce the winners of the 2004 Prairie Schooner Prize Book Series.

Prairie Schooner and the University of Nebraska Press are pleased to announce the winners of the 2004 Prairie Schooner Prize Book Series.

POETRY:

Rynn Williams, for her collection Adonis Garage

New York writer Rynn Williams’s poetry has appeared in The Nation, Beloit Poetry Journal, Crazyhorse, New Orleans Review, Southern Poetry Review, and North American Review, among other journals. She has received a fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts, a scholarship from Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, and has been awarded residencies by the Ragdale Foundation and Dorland Mountain Arts Colony. Her coffee table book, Pumpkins, will be issued in paper this fall. Adonis Garage is her first book of poems, one that has been called by writer Judith Ortiz Cofer, “a book of life written by someone who has lived honestly and passionately, and whose art has been mastered in order to bear witness and find meaning in each day.” These poems are “brutally frank, brutally beautiful, and sexy,” says writer and critic Jonathan Holden. Each poem speaks plainly about excess and playing with the hand life deals you. No self-pity or apologies here; rather a sense of having come through the fire intact and ready to face whatever the world throws at you next.

FICTION:

Brock Clarke, for his collection Carrying the Torch

Brock Clarke is the author of What We Won’t Do, winner of the 2002 Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction from Sarabande Books, and The Ordinary White Boy, originally published by Harcourt in 2001 and reprinted in paper in 2002. His fiction and non-fiction have appeared in New England Review, Mississippi Review, American Fiction, South Carolina Review, The Southern Review, and New Stories From the South: Best of 2003, among others. He is the recipient of a Walter Dakin fellowship at the 2002 Sewanee Writers Conference and was named a fellow at the Wesleyan Writers Conference. He is an assistant professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Cincinnati.

Carrying the Torch is “a collection of beautifully written stories, notable for their balance of sentiment and restraint, the music of their language, and the haunting human longing that coexists with the irony and the humor,” says novelist and writer Lee Martin. The stories are hilarious and poignant, each one filled with completely imperfect people. Such stories require a masterful touch and Clarke certainly has it, always keeping one foot solidly in the matters of the human heart while giving free reign to the ironic vision through which those matters surface. Clarke is “immensely versatile, fresh, surprising, and talented,” says writer Marly Swick.

Rynn Williams and Brock Clarke will each receive a $3,000 prize and publication of their books through the University of Nebraska Press. Adonis Garage and Carrying the Torch will be published in the Fall of 2005.

We thank all those who submitted manuscripts to this year's competition! We were delighted by both the high number and the high quality of the submissions received. There were many wonderful manuscripts, and our decision was a difficult one. We hope to see more of your work in next year's contest.

The 2005 Prairie Schooner Prize Series will award $3,000 and publication to one collection of poetry and one collection of fiction. Information for the 2005 competition will be posted in due course on this site.