The University of Georgia Press is pleased to announce the winners of the 2009 Flannery O’Connor Short Fiction Award: Linda L. Grover for her manuscript “The Dance Boots” and Jessica Treadway for her manuscript “Please Come Back to Me.” The award recognizes a superlative book-length collection of short fiction and includes a cash prize of $1000 and publication by the University of Georgia Press.Linda LeGarde Grover is a professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, and an Ojibwe, a member of the Bois Forte Band of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe. Her academic research examines the effects of federal and state Indian education policy on Ojibwe children, families, and communities. Grover’s winning collection of interconnected short stories slips back and forth in time to give an account of the lives an extended family. In the process she illustrates the wide-reaching consequences of the federal policy of removing children from their families to be educated in off-reservation boarding schools.
Jessica Treadway is a native of upstate New York and a former reporter for United Press International. She is currently associate professor of Writing, Literature and Publishing at Emerson College. In most of the stories in her winning collection "Please Come Back to Me," the line between parents, partners, and children is strictly drawn; there are perspectives from all sides, but very little empathy in between. Treadway has previously published a collection of stories, Absent Without Leave (Delphinium) and a novel, And Give You Peace (Greywolf).
The press will begin accepting manuscripts for next year’s competition April 1.
Details about the award series and submission guidelines can be found here.
