Shenandoah Announces Annual Prize Winners
Shenandoah: The Washington and Lee University Review announces the winners of its annual fiction, essay and poetry prizes for 2007. The annual prizes are given for the best short story, essay and poem or group of poems published in Shenandoah during a volume year. There is no application process.
Pam Durban of Chapel Hill, North Carolina won the $1,000 Goodheart Prize for Fiction for her story, “The Jap Room,” published in Shenandoah 57/2. The Goodheart Prize is made possible by a generous gift of Harry G. Goodheart, III ’66, of Tryon, North Carolina in memory of his mother, Jeanne Charpiot Goodheart, who wishes the prize to reflect Jeanne Goodheart’s enthusiastic interest in well-crafted fiction and her affection for Washington and Lee University. James Lee Burke of New Iberia, Louisiana was the judge. Durban is the recipient of a Whiting Writer’s Award and an NEA Individual Artist Fellowship. Her stories have been widely anthologized, and her books include the novels So Far Back (2002) and The Laughing Place (1993), both from Picador. Her short story “Soon” was included in The Best American Short Stories of the Century. She is the Doris Betts Professor of Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina.
Joy Passanante won the $1,000 Thomas H. Carter Prize for the Essay for her work, “Visitations,” published in Shenandoah 57/3. The Carter Prize, judged this year by Paul Crenshaw of Greensboro, North Carolina, is given in honor of the late Thomas H. Carter, an early editor of Shenandoah. Passanante is the Associate Director of Creative Writing at the University of Idaho and has published work in The Georgia Review, The Gettysburg Review and Alaska Quarterly Review. Her collection of stories is The Art of Absence (Lost Horse, 2004); her novel, My Mother’s Lovers, was published by Nevada in 2002.
David Bottoms is winner of the $1,000 James Boatwright Prize for Poetry for his poem, “First Woods,” which appeared in Shenandoah 57/3. The $1000 prize for poetry is made possible by gifts from friends of the late James Boatwright, former editor of Shenandoah. Eavan Boland of Stanford, California was the judge. Bottoms has received the Walt Whitman Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is the founding editor of Five Points and has been since 2000 the Poet Laureate of the State of Virginia. Bottoms is the author of two novels, and his collections of poetry include Armored Hearts (1995), Vagrant Grace (1999) and Waltzing through the Endtime (2004), all from Copper Canyon Press.
