Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
Three Puget Sound area writers have received national awards for their novels, an accomplishment all the more remarkable because all of the honored books are debut novels.
Karen Fisher of Lopez Island won the Sherwood Anderson Foundation Award for Emerging Writers for "A Sudden Country." MacKenzie Bezos of the Eastside is one of 13 winners of an American Book Award for "The Testing of Luther Albright." Matt Briggs of Des Moines received another American Book Award for "Shoot the Buffalo," the first national award for the innovative Clear Cut Press of Portland.
The Anderson Award, which carries a hefty $15,000 prize, is just the latest in a series of honors for Fisher's much-praised retelling of the Oregon Trail saga. "A Sudden Country" (Random House, 366 pages, $24.95) was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and a Los Angeles Times Prize; it won the best debut novel of the year award from Virginia Commonwealth University.
The Anderson award, while not as well known as the writer for whom it is named, is among the most lucrative national literary prizes. The monetary reward is particularly helpful to the 45-year-old Fisher, who spent 14 years laboring over her debut novel and lives a spartan existence with her husband and children on Lopez.
"I'm totally thrilled about the Anderson award," Fisher says. "I was in a motel room in Missoula on book tour and there was a note under my door saying to call the foundation and added, 'Congratulations.' My heart was pounding. This award will pay our bills while I write my next novel. It means I won't have to work as a carpenter to get through the next book."
The first national awards for their writing also carries great meaning for Bezos and Briggs. The American Book Awards, which are different from the National Book Awards, honor writers whose works represent the diversity of this country's literary culture.
"The Testing of Luther Albright" (Fourth Estate, 239 pages, $23.95) tells the story of a distant, disengaged engineer who recounts his fall from a life of good fortune. Bezos, 36, earned mostly positive reviews for her first literary effort, overcoming some skepticism, at least among some fellow authors, about the work of a writer who happens to be married to the founder of Amazon.com.
She worked eight years on her novel, which is another reason why her first award means so much to the former Princeton student of Toni Morrison, Nobel laureate.
"The American Book Award came as a complete surprise to me," Bezos says, "and I'm really delighted and grateful."
The American Book Award for "Shoot the Buffalo" (Clear Cut Press, 515 pages, $14.95) represents a coup for both Briggs and the small press that took a chance on the novel after it had been rejected by major New York publishers.
"Shoot the Buffalo" is a powerful, quirky family novel set in the time and place where Briggs grew up -- the 1970s in the Snoqualmie Valley. It was greeted with some rhapsodic reviews in the region. Portland's Oregonian newspaper said of Briggs: "Not since the emergence of Sherman Alexie has the Northwest produced such a unique narrative voice."
Briggs, 35, weathered considerable disappointment over the book's rejection by New York houses, which makes the American Book Award that much sweeter.
"When I found out about it, I was excited," Briggs says. "It is very much not a New York award. It is deliberately about other cultures of the United States, which is where I am."
Clear Cut Press, headed by longtime Seattleites Richard Jensen and Matthew Stadler, has followed an innovative approach to publishing, offering subscriptions to new literary works published in an arty little paperback format used in Japan.
"We're thrilled for Matt and for Clear Cut," says Stadler, the press's editor. "This is further evidence that subscription-based publishing focused on serving readers and independent businesses (rather than filling large distribution systems and chains) can circulate great new work deep into the culture and give it the visibility and long life it deserves."
Bezos and Briggs will receive their American Book Awards at an October ceremony in the Oakland, Calif., home of the Before Columbus Foundation that confers the awards. Fisher will receive her Anderson prize at the October meeting of the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance in Orlando, Fla.
To see more of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, for online features, or to subscribe, go to http://seattlep-I.com.
© 1998-2006 Seattle Post-Intelligencer. All Rights Reserved.
