UWEM AKPAN, the Nigerian-born Jesuit priest whose début short-story collection,
Say You’re One of Them (Little, Brown, 2008), has been chosen by
Oprah Winfrey as her next Book Club pick. This is the first time the US talk-show maven has chosen a short-story collection, I believe. Akpan studied philosophy and English at Creighton and Gonzaga universities, then studied theology for three years at the Catholic University of Eastern Africa. He was ordained a Jesuit priest in 2003 and received his master’s degree in creative writing from the University of Michigan in 2006.
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THE WINNER of the
2009 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize will be announced any time now. So, who will it be? Will it be
Petina Gappah (
An Elegy for Easterly),
Shih-Li Koh (
Ripples and Other Stories),
Wells Tower (
Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned),
Simon Van Booy (
Love Begins in Winter),
Charlotte Grimshaw (
Singularity) or
Philip Ó Ceallaigh (
The Pleasant Light of Day)?
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It has been announced that
SIMON VAN BOOY’s
Love Begins in Winter (HarperCollins USA/Beautiful Books, 2008) is the winner of the world’s richest prize for a short-story collection. Van Booy is the author of a previous short-story collection,
The Secret Lives of People in Love. His first novel will be published in 2010. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this collection. Previous winners of the Frank O include
Yiyun Li (
A Thousand Years of Good Prayers),
Haruki Murakami (
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman),
Miranda July (
No One Belongs Here More Than You) and
Jhumpa Lahiri (
Unaccustomed Earth).
2 Comments:
My vote goes to Shih-Li Koh! :D
I think Simon Van Booy is the one to look out for!
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