2007 New Hampshire Literary Award Winners

The New Hampshire Writers’ Project (NHWP) has announced the winners of the 2007 New Hampshire Literary Awards, a biennial program that honors outstanding works by writers connected to the Granite State. The awards ceremony takes place on November 17, 2007 at Southern New Hampshire University. Here are the details from their 10/19/07 press release:

This year NHWP presents the new Donald M. Murray Outstanding Journalism Award in honor of the late Donald M. Murray, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and mentor to many reporters and writers. The award’s first recipient is Annmarie Timmins, a veteran reporter for the Concord Monitor. The journalism judges said this about Timmins’s work: “Like Don Murray, Timmins tackles difficult and painful subjects, such as her sensitive and thorough look at gay adoptions and prison visits by loved ones outside the bars. Her compelling collection of stories displays tenacious reporting, unflinching prose and a commitment to portraying subjects with dignity.” Judges were Roy Peter Clark and Chip Scanlon of the Poynter Institute.

The New Hampshire Literary Award for Outstanding Work of Children’s Literature goes to Julie Baker for The Bread and Roses Strike of 1912. In this work of narrative nonfiction for young people, Baker explores the landmark strike involving textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts that galvanized the American labor movement and brought attention to such issues as child labor and workplace safety. “Baker delved into rich, documented material—complicated, historical, emotional, political—and laid it out fairly and with intelligence,” said the children’s literature judges. “She managed to acknowledge conflicting versions and responses and yet also took a stand in how the strike was presented. She didn’t lose the human story beneath a mountain of dry facts.” Judges were Carolyn Coman, Anita Riggio, and Carolyn Yoder.

The New Hampshire Literary Award for Outstanding Work of Fiction goes to Rebecca Curtis for the short-story collection Twenty Grand: And Other Tales of Love and Money. Curtis sets many of her stories in small-town New Hampshire, where she grew up hiking, skiing, and working in local restaurants and amusement parks. She has been called a “hugely talented writer” (Village Voice), and Twenty Grand, her debut collection, was published to critical acclaim. “Curtis is unafraid to peel back the beautiful top layer of bucolic New England to reveal the darkness beneath,” said the fiction judges. “From the simplest language, she can coax emotionally complex scenarios that resonate with the reader long past the story’s last word.” Judges were Tricia Bauer, Aine Greaney, and Deb Navas.

The Jane Kenyon Award for Outstanding Book of Poetry goes to Maggie Dietz for Perennial Fall, her first book of poetry. Dietz creates a world populated by the everyday and strange: amusement-park horses named Virgil and Sisyphus and squirrels hanging over tree branches “like fish.” Her poems have been described as mysterious and direct, humorous and elegiac. The poetry judges said, “Perennial Fall has music, wit, eloquence, emotional complexity, and sensual specificity of breathtaking tenderness. Her way of wrestling with the world’s harsh beauty is deeply persuasive.” Judges were Patrick Donnelly, Joan Houlihan, and Joyce Peseroff.

Edith Milton is the recipient of the New Hampshire Literary Award for Outstanding Work of Nonfiction for The Tiger in the Attic: Memories of the Kindertransport and Growing Up English. In this memoir Milton describes her journey from life as a Jewish child in Nazi Germany to life with a British foster family in England, where she and her sister lived as refugees for seven years, to the reunification with her mother in America. The nonfiction judges said, “Milton deftly brings the reader into the mind of an ‘alien’ child placed in a manor house, where the British character is everywhere in evidence. While Milton has a powerful story to tell, it’s the way she tells that dazzles. Always, she pushes past her own experiences to illuminate big questions: What is an alien? And where is home?” Judges were Pagan Kennedy, Rebecca Sinkler, and Ben Watson.

Theodore Weesner is the winner of the New Hampshire Literary Award for Lifetime Achievement. The author of seven novels and one short-story collection, Weesner has also had work published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Best American Short Stories, and many other publications. NHWP’s board of trustees grants the Lifetime Achievement Award. The board said, “From his award-winning debut novel, The Car Thief, to his most recent, Harbor Lights, Theodore Weesner has, in the words of Russell Banks, ‘come numerous times to the rescue of American realism in fiction.’ Raised in Flint, Michigan, Weesner is a New Hampshire writer by choice and by temperament. His novels The True Detective and Novemberfest are set in Portsmouth, where he has long made his home, and Harbor Lights crosses the Piscataqua into Maine. Throughout his career, he has pursued, to great critical acclaim, what he has called ‘the writer’s challenge of bringing order and interpretation to the chaos of general experience.’”