24158: (pub) Chamberlain: Haitian-American wins first short story book award (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

     By Chris Michaud

     NEW YORK, Jan 27 (Reuters) - Haitian-American Edwidge Danticat became
the first winner of The Story Prize, a new annual book award honoring short
story collections.
     Danticat, who was born in Haiti and came to the United States at age
12, received the award, which included a $20,000 check, on Wednesday night
for "The Dew Breaker."
     The interconnected short stories revolve around Haitians whose lives
have all been affected by the actions of a humble Brooklyn barber with a
secret past as a brutal prison guard during Haiti's Duvalier dictatorship.
     "I'm very honored," Danticat told the Manhattan audience. She quipped
that her companion at the event had just commented, "This is like the
Oscars," after actresses Jane Curtin, Kate Burton and Sonia Manzano read
stories from the three finalists' works.
     "The most precious gift that a writer can get is time," she said,
noting that the cash prize, which organizers said was the largest of any
annual U.S. book award, would buy "a lot of time, time that one can invest
back into one's work."
     The other two finalists were Joan Silber's "Ideas of Heaven," with
settings ranging from present day France and New York to China during the
Boxer rebellion, and Cathy Day's "The Circus in Winter," a lyrical work
that tells the stories of three generations of circus performers in Lima,
Indiana.
     Silber's work was a National Book Award finalist last month.
     But it was Danticat's stories that most impressed the judges, author
Dan Chaon, Chicago bookseller Ann Christophersen and Paris Review executive
editor Brigid Hughes.
     "The Dew Breaker," published by Alfred A. Knopf, was a finalist for
the National Book Critics Circle Award. It was represented at the reading
by "The Book of Miracles," a tale in which the barber, his wife and
daughter attend Christmas Eve Mass, during which the daughter fears that
she has seen one of Haiti's most-wanted war criminals.
     The organizers, who presented the honors in a ceremony in conjunction
with National Public Radio's "Selected Shorts" series, said the award aims
to "celebrate the virtues and brevity of precision," as well as to bring
recognition to what they said was an under-appreciated form.