Converse MFA Announces Inaugural Alumni Book Prize Winners
The Converse Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing and Clemson University Press are pleased to announce the winners of the 2021 Converse MFA Alumni Book Prize as selected by this year’s judge, Vassar Miller Poetry Prize-winning author Jeanine Hathaway. For 2021, Hathaway has selected two co-winners: Kim Shegog for her short story collection, Crossing Over, and Sarah Cooper, for her poetry collection, 89%.
The Converse MFA Alumni Book Prize is awarded every two years to a Converse MFA graduate who has submitted an original book-length manuscript. All entries are judged anonymously by a writer of national distinction, and the author of the winning manuscript(s) is awarded a book contract with Clemson University Press, plus the winner(s) are invited (expenses paid) to give a public reading from the winning manuscript at the Converse MFA program’s residency session. Clemson University Press plans to release the prize-winning books in the spring of 2022.
In selecting this year’s winners, Hathaway stated that all the manuscripts distinguished themselves. She shared the following comments about the prize-winners:
Crossing Over
Anyone who played “Red Rover” or attended a funeral or stood on a bridge, calculating, knows there will be loss and gain in the passage suggested by the richly layered title. In stories strikingly varied, relationships shift, mores and morals hold up to scrutiny or resistance. Each presents us with characters on edge. Snake handlers, sibling and spousal rivals, suicide, stillbirth—these provide dramatic moments for characters to obey or resist the rules of civility and responsibility. The title implies choice. Call them acts of stasis or maturity, deeper entrenchment or overcoming habits, the choices position characters for change. The novella begins with a death and through complications of familial love closes on the possibility of a rebirth.
Gripped by each of the stories, we see that our own small lapses and courageous actions, petty angers and fears, will have consequences we hadn’t planned on. The ultimate charge is to review our options and take a step in the direction of what offers life. These are generous stories that reveal, dangerous or not, that step could get us to the other side.
89%
Organized like a scientific file, this is a love story of a daughter’s powerful love for her dying mother, her dutiful love for her father, her awakening love for other women. Each form, filial and romantic, bears an urgency. The poems themselves are an energizing mix of genres, some free verse, some prose poems, and the mother’s surprising one-liners. Her observations (“If you have a cat, you will always have standards.”) and maternal advice are laugh-out-loud brilliant. The poet deftly interrupts sexual tensions and unrelenting tragedy with some truly funny comic relief. The narrative engages repetition and rhythm that match the morphine doses, depths of observation and heights of hope, connection and ultimate loss. The mother had an 11% chance of surviving the cancer. In the skilled hands of this poet, the family has a 100% of living on in our hearts.
Complete list of winners and finalists:
- Kim Shegog, Co-winner, Crossing Over (short fiction)
- Sarah Cooper, Co-winner, 89% (poetry)
- David Hartshorne, finalist, The One-Ten to Yellowknife and Other Stories
- Gwen Holt, finalist, Alyson