Ann Arbor, MI - GLCA is pleased to announce the winners of the 2010 New Writers Award for fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction. Now in its 41st year, the New Writers Award confers recognition on promising writers who have published their first volume in one of the three genres. The program provides undergraduate students of member colleges with opportunities to meet with winning writers during campus visits.

The 2010 winner for fiction is Josh Weil, The New Valley, published by Grove Press. Our GLCA judges note:

The New Valley is an amazing book, a phenomenal trio of novellas. Weil has a great gift for voice and description, and the stories captured in these pages are engaging, intense and often riveting. The setting that links these stories together is well rendered, conveying a deep understanding of the relationship between the people and the land. Throughout, there is a sense of longing and compassion for each character. Weil manages to see through to the rawest, most tender and aching core of humanity in each of them. They’re multivalent, conflicted, self-shadowed, as complex in defiance as they are in defeat—and each is painstakingly described, rendered tangibly and plausibly, in language that’s both deflated and poetically charged. Easing us into the tormented lives of its protagonists, the collection leaves us with something like wisdom—wisdom we can’t locate on a page, or in a passage, but take away anyway as we come away changed.

The 2010 winner for poetry is Kevin McFadden, Hardscrabble, published by the University of Georgia Press. Our judges note:

On first reading, what’s in evidence in this collection is McFadden’s endlessly ingenious wordplay. This book is a riot act from beginning to end in its adventurous approach to poetry, always exciting, always generative. McFadden brings a variety of forms, constraints, and approaches to the poem itself as an object. It’s impressive, the range of register this rambling can accommodate, erudition rubbing shoulders with rude jokes, and references to the classics ricocheting off of mispronunciations. McFadden shows language to be a source of revelation. The oddity of language reveals the compelling developments of American history, the intricacies of family relationships, and theological ruminations. McFadden’s deep subject is the way we create ourselves by collaboration with chance; in choosing to take some kind of serious stand, we have to come to terms with or take responsibility for something arbitrary – or fortuitous – in our choice. The double-sense of the title perfectly suits the book’s relationships between American work and play.

The 2010 winner for creative non-fiction is Diana Joseph, I'm Sorry You Feel That Way: The Astonishing but True Story of a Daughter, Sister, Slut, Wife, Mother, and Friend to Man & Dog, Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam. Our judges note:

This bright brassy collection of essays introduces readers to a circus of colorful characters; it is a mock-memoir in which the author takes delight in displaying the many lacks, shortcomings, and absurdities in her life and the lives of those around her. Her funny, declarative voice, her sharp eye for detail, and her cunning sizing up of human nature make this collection a delightful read. The book hits the bull's eye of complications and copings of modern life. Particularly fresh are her wry observations of class, and how she feels like a freakish, low-life outsider finding her way through such venerable institutions as marriage, motherhood, and academia. Her narrator watches people and watches herself, letting no one off the hook. For all her in-your-face bravado, she reveals her vulnerability, the pulse of a tender heart and proves the essay form is as lively and needed as ever.

Judges of the New Writers Awards are faculty members of GLCA’s member colleges. Judges for the fiction award were: David Harris Ebenbach (Earlham), Karin Lin-Greenburg (Wooster), and Kirk Nesset (Allegheny). The judges for the poetry award were: Kazim Ali (Oberlin), David Caplin (Ohio Wesleyan), and Jennifer Clarvoe (Kenyon). Judges for the award in creative non-fiction were: Gail Griffin (Kalamazoo), Dennis Read (Denison), and Lili Wright (DePauw).

For more information on the New Writers Award, please contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , director of the New Writers Award.