Despite the weekend's grand waterfall that ran from an exploded radiator on the second floor into the guest bedroom (where all the Christmas presents were hiding), I have good news. My novel A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage has won The Ferrol Sams Award for Fiction, given to the "best book that speaks to the human condition in a Southern context. This category includes both novels and short stories."Publication to follow from Mercer University Press.
I'm very glad that this will be published by a Georgia press because the story was inspired by my childhood's summer weeks in Lexsy and Collins as well as by scraps of stories about my great-grandfather's two mixed race sons, brought up with his twenty-two legitimate children. One of them was my sharecropper grandfather's favorite brother, a thing that taught me early on that the schoolbook history of our places and our times is insufficient to explain the workings of the heart.
Congratulations, Marly!
ReplyDeleteI'm toasting you from distant Wales, though we'll do the job more properly when you visit next year. Well done Marly. What a star you are!
ReplyDeleteCongratulations, great news.
ReplyDeleteOh Wow!!!!! Way to start the year off with a bang! you are going to have a great year
ReplyDeleteThanks! And to all the fb people who have popped by to see what the fuss was about as well...
ReplyDeleteCongrats Marly! I missed this. I'm so glad you got this award. I know that it is particularly meaningful to you. It's about time. Somehow my blog did not notify me of the update!
ReplyDeleteYes, I had just been sitting on this manuscript--good to get it out to a Georgia house.
ReplyDeleteAnd congrats from me too, as well!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Robert--nice to get a little cheer while I sit waiting for the insurance company to call about The Great Deluge.
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