Prairie Schooner announces annual fiction, poetry award winners

Prairie Schooner at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has announced the winners and runners-up for its annual awards for books of short fiction and poetry. The winners were chosen from 1,100 submissions from around the world. Winners receive $3,000 and publication by the University of Nebraska Press. Runners-up receive $1,000.

The winner of the 2008 Prairie Schooner Book Prize in short fiction is Ted Gilley of Bennington, Vt., for "Bliss." Gilley is a native of southwestern Virginia but has lived in New England for 30 years. His poems and short stories have appeared in Poetry Northwest, Northwest Review, Prairie Schooner, Rattle, The National Review, New England Review, Free Verse, and many other magazines and anthologies. Awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts/Vermont Arts Council and the McCullough Library in 2007, Gilley won the Alehouse Press national poetry competition in 2008.

The runner-up in the fiction category is Garth Risk Hallberg of Brooklyn, N.Y., for "The Descent of Man: Stories." Hallberg is the author of "A Field Guide to the North American Family," a novella. His writing has appeared in Glimmer Train, Slate and Best New American Voices 2008. His fiction has earned Pushcart Prize and Believer Book Award nominations and fellowships from New York University and the New York Foundation for the Arts.

The winner of the 2008 Prairie Schooner Book Prize in poetry is Shane Book of San Francisco for "Fourth World." Book's poetry appears in journals in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada, and in many anthologies, most recently "Gathering Ground." He was educated at the University of Western Ontario, the University of Victoria, New York University, the Iowa Writers' Workshop and Stanford University, where he was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in poetry. The recipient of scholarships to Cave Canem, the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, and Breadloaf, his awards include a New York Times Fellowship in Poetry, the Malahat Review Long Poem Prize, an Academy of American Poets Prize and a National Magazine Award.

The runner-up in the poetry category is Nicole Cooley of Glen Ridge, N.J., for "Milk Dress." Cooley grew up in New Orleans. Her new book of poems, "Breach," about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, will be published by Louisiana State University Press in March 2010. Her first book of poetry, "Resurrection," won the 1995 Walt Whitman Award. Her second book of poetry, "The Afflicted Girls," was chosen as one of the best poetry books of the year by Library Journal. She also published a novel, "Judy Garland, Ginger Love," in 1998. She has received a Discovery/The Nation award, a National Endowment for the Arts Grant and the Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America. Her poems have appeared in The Nation, Poetry, Missouri Review, Pleaides and Mississippi Review. She is an associate professor of English and creative writing at Queens College-City University of New York, where she directs the new master of fine arts program in creative writing and literary translation.

The competition, in its seventh year, runs Jan. 15 to March 15 annually. Submission details and a list of past winners are available online at http://prairieschooner.unl.edu/prizes/index.html.

Founded in 1927, Prairie Schooner is a national literary quarterly published with the support of the English Department at UNL. It publishes fiction, poetry, essays and reviews by beginning, mid-career and established writers. For more information, visit http://prairieschooner.unl.edu.