Category Archives: Awards

It is the Noble (Not Nobel) Prize for 2008. If you go to http://www.myshelf.com and press the Back to Literature column a little blurb comments on the book. Allow me to cite Carolyn Howard-Johnson at length:

They say self-deprecating humor can be a good thing. So, know that the authors I pick for my Noble will never get famous for the prestige it bestows on the book or the writer. The award is an opportunity, of course, for some bragging rights, maybe in one’s local press and online. But it’s really all about giving writers of literary fiction and poetry a little recognition, appreciation for their talents and, yes, a little love.

For those considering applying for the award, books considered should show literary excellence in use of the English language. They should present themes or premises that might help readers recongnize and curtail bigotry, or explore the human condition in other important ways. The contest is free except for the cost of the book. You may reach me at HoJoNews@aol.com for instructions on where to mail it. . . .

Her blurb says it very well — “The author … tells stories daringly, like none you’ve read before.”

I am feeling somewhat grandiose; I’ll take a nap and it will soon go away.

“CAMERAS AS REMEMBRANCES OF THINGS PAST” October – December 2008 Edition.

David Herrle, editor of Subtletea (www.subtletea.com) has selected the above essay as the winner of his magazine’s summer contest. I am particularly honored because David Herrle is a polymath of the first order.

When you access my essay, I urge you to peruse the contents of his excellent magazine.

The essay took shape as a blog!

I am quite elated.

For the second year in a row I have won this award, once for The i Tetralogy. of course, I am elated and surprised. I had no idea that this small book of stories had such strength to it. It is a collection that spans 33 years. I learned how to write with short stories, to get to the point, to shag the fly, to say much less than much more. I found it not bitter, but ironically sweet that I am receiving awards at this autumnal stage of my life. Duff Brenna, novelist, reviewed the book at perigee-art.com so favorably that we struck up a correspondence. I forwarded “i” to him and he exploded with rave reviews, labeling me a “genius.” What meant more to me was this: “I’m edgy, but you’re over the edge and plunging. I hang on with my fingernails, but you let go and say,’Come what may!’ Fuck, I admire that….” And on.

Here I am with kudos and laurel wreaths in my lap and I muse about four decades of writing. I am trying to take the measure of these experiences, to comprehend this crazed mobius strip I’ve been on. Duff asked me what would I do next. Curiously, or maybe not so curiously, I sing my song again — all my writing has been about meaning, intent, and purpose, about grasping self. What I have before me are the bones of an allegorical fantasy written more than two decades ago. It is a fantasy of a damaged world with a creature that begins to become awakened by intelligence. It is bathed in Freudian sauce — I was in a psychoanalytic program at the time — and reflects issues of abandonment, loss, lust, instinct, repression and that whole box of Forrest Gump chocolates of the therapist’s quiver. However, again, it is all about me, as I transmute my anguish into a viable cloth. Since it is so old, I am picking about this corpse, pruning it, revitalizing it — “It’s alive! It’s alive! What i am proudest of is the range — Holocaust fiction, short stories, sci-fi fantasies. What is common to all of them is a seriousness I have always had, a philosophical cast to the way I think — to know myself at whatever cost before I plunge into the world of quarks and neutrinos.