Peterkin Award Winner to Give Reading, Book Signing

Author and 2011 Julia Peterkin Award Winner Jennifer S. Davis will give a free public reading of her recent works of fiction at Converse College on Tuesday, September 27 at 8:00 p.m. in the Bain Room of Wilson Hall. A reception and book-signing will precede the reading at 7:30. Davis was selected for the award from a pool of more than 350 entries worldwide. The reading and award are sponsored by the Converse Creative Writing program.

Jennifer S. Davis’s books include the short fiction collection Her Kind of Want, winner of the Iowa Short Fiction Award, and Our Former Lives in Art, published with Random House. Her stories have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies.

“The Julia Peterkin selection committee is always looking for writing that demonstrates mastery and skill in craft, but we also look for writing that transcends our expectations of what a good story or poem can do,” says Rick Mulkey, director of creative writing at Converse. “Jennifer Davis not only writes a beautiful story, but the committee found that her characters always took us to unexpected destinations. Her fiction suggested that this is a writer who knows the tradition she writes of, in this case the Southern short story, but that this is also a writer who pushes the boundaries of that tradition.”

Set mainly in the small towns of Alabama, the stories in Davis’s first two books focus mainly on women and ache with the longing of the struggling southern women. These are women who married too fast, had children too young, and drink too much. They are housewives who have unexpected romantic encounters during tornados, and they are a young couple caught in a fatal accident and left wondering about their own existence and marriage. Yet beneath the unpolished exteriors of these characters, these women are flesh and blood, and their wants and needs are as severe and deep as any.

Davis’s characters relate their stories in voices as complex and raw as their southern environment, but Davis moves beyond the familiar stories of the rural South to expose the gaps that connect these women, creating startlingly real and vibrant characters.

Jennifer S. Davis was born and raised in Alabama, where she grew up exploring the banks of Lake Martin and the Tallapoosa River. She has lived and worked in Montana, Denver, Miami, Rio de Janeiro, Washington state and New Orleans. In 2001, she received her MFA from the University of Alabama. Recently, she taught fiction in the MFA program at Eastern Washington University, where she served as editor of Willow Springs. Currently, she teaches at the University of Colorado-Denver.

The Julia Peterkin Award was named after Converse College graduate and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Julia Mood Peterkin. Davis’s winning story was one of over 350 entries submitted from across the globe. Each entry was read by the selection committee that included Converse MFA Creative Writing graduates Lyn Riddle and Jeffrey Schrecongost, and Converse MFA and BFA faculty members Susan Tekulve and Rick Mulkey.