LINDA BUSBY PARKER RECEIPIENT
OF 10TH ANNUAL JAMES JONES FIRST NOVEL FELLOWSHIP
Wilkes-Barre, PA (November 25, 2002)
The Humanities Division at Wilkes University and the James Jones Literary
Society recently announced the winner of this year’s James Jones First Novel
Fellowship.
Linda Busby Parker of Mobile, Alabama, was awarded the $5,000 first prize
earlier this month. She will be formally recognized at the annual
meeting of the Society next fall at the University of Texas in Austin.
The award is given annually in honor of the late James Jones, author of
From Here to Eternity (1951), Some Came Running (1957), The Ice-Cream Headache
and Other Stories (1967) and many other works.
The University’s Humanities Division administers the contest, which was
established in 1992, to honor the spirit of unblinking honesty, determination
and insight into modern culture exemplified by James Jones.
The novels of several previous winners have been published.
Parker’s manuscript, The Sum of Augusts, was chosen out of 665 submissions
to the contest. Set in rural Alabama in a mythical community between
Montgomery and Birmingham during the years 1954-1994, the novel traces the
struggle of an African-American, Brewster McAtee, to build his own house
and better himself. Caught in the crossfire of events set against the
backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement in the deep South, McAtee’s situation
illumines an important era in American history. According to one of
the judges, J. Michael Lennon, Professor of English at Wilkes, “Parker’s
prose is lucid and lyrical and her story one of the most moving we have seen
in the ten years of the Jones Fellowship.”
A former university professor of communication at the University of South
Alabama in Mobile, Parker earned her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees at the University
of Michigan and her B.A. at the University of the South. She gave
up her tenured position six years ago to devote herself full-time to writing.
She attended summer writing programs at Indiana University, Bread Loaf Writers
Conference in Vermont and also at Kenyon College in Ohio. Chapters
of her novel resulted in the award of a Heartland Fellowship at Indiana University
in 2000. She is currently a student in the MFA program at Spalding
University in Louisville, Kentucky. She is married with three daughters
and is working on a second novel, also set in the South and dealing with
the Civil Rights Movement.
The runner –up in this year’s contest and given a $250 prize is E. A. Bagby
of Chicago, Illinois, for her novel titled Rook. The title character,
Rook, is the food critic for a big-city newspaper who has taken too many
free meals and bribes and begins to disintegrate. The discovery of
an unknown relative gives him the opportunity for revitalization. “Rook
is fast-paced and full of surprise turns; Bagby’s prose is as delicious as
the food she describes,” said Lennon.
Bagby grew up in Las Cruces, New Mexico and studied film and comparative
literature at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, where she graduated
summa cum laude in 1998. Her essays appear in Conversely (www.conversely.com)
and The Writing Group Book (ed. Lisa Rosenthal, Chicago Review Press, 2003).
Her short story, “S,” is slated for publication in the anthology Choices:
Short Stories.
Bagby has acted in a number of local theatrical productions and she writes
a column on acting for Preview, the subscriber journal of Chicago’s American
Theater Company. She is now working on a second novel titled The Crosses
set in her native Las Cruces. She is also working on both stage and
screen plays.
The judges for this year’s contest were Kaylie Jones, the daughter of James
Jones and author of four novels; Kevin Heisler, a New York-based writer;
Dr. Patricia Heaman, Professor Emeritus of English at Wilkes, and former
English Department chair; and Dr. J. Michael Lennon, Professor of English
and Emeritus Vice President for Academic Affairs at Wilkes.
The James Jones First Novel Fellowship welcomes inquiries on the contest.
Requests for guidelines should be sent with a S.A.S.E. to James Jones First
Novel Fellowship, c/o English Department, Kirby Hall, Wilkes University,
Wilkes-Barre, PA 18766, or via email to English@wilkes.edu. Submission
deadline is March 1st of each year.