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THE WRITE STUFF
By CAROLE GOLDBERG
Courant Books Editor
June 26 2005
Edward P. Jones has become the first American author to win the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Jones was honored for his novel about a black slaveholder who hopes he can be "a better master than any white man he had ever known."
"The Known World," which also won a 2004 Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Critics Circle Award, was selected from among 10 works of fiction published in English, chosen from 147 books nominated by public libraries from 51 countries. The IMPAC award, worth about $120,000, was founded in 1994. The judges called Jones' book "a remarkable re-creation of a world we might have thought we already knew."
In Connecticut, IMPAC, a management consultancy firm, is a major sponsor of the annual IMPAC-Connecticut State University Young Writers Competition, which presented its eighth annual awards earlier this month.
Top honors went to two students at the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts. Charlotte Crowe of Canton won the prose award for her short story, "Korean Laundry." Jessica Roth of Granby won the poetry award for her poem "Growing Citrus."