The 2009 Kafka Award Winner
This year the 2009 Recipient of the
Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for Fiction by an American Woman is Isla
Morley for her novel "Come Sunday" .
Come meet the author!
Book reading & award ceremony, followed
by an hors d’oeuvres reception & book signing.
Books will be available
for purchase at the event provided by Campus Bookstore.
This event is free and open to the public.
Thursday,
October 21st
5-7pm
Welles-Brown Room
Rush Rhees Library
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About the book
"A beautifully written story of overwhelming grief and how it can both distort and clarify, Come Sunday takes us through a year in the life of Abbe Deighton, a pastor’s wife living in Honolulu. After her young daughter’s death, Abbe shuts out her husband and friends and dwells on memories of her South African childhood with an abusive father and a passive mother. Abbe’s sad year culminates with a trip to South Africa and a confrontation with family secrets and family legacies."
-Kathleen McGowan, 2009 Janet Heidinger Kafka Award Committee Chair
About the Author
Isla Morley grew up in South Africa during apartheid, the child of a British father and fourth-generation South African mother. During the country’s State of Emergency, she graduated from Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth with a degree in English Literature. By 1994 she was one of the youngest magazine editors in South Africa, but left career, country and kin when she married an American and moved to California. For more than a decade she pursued a career in non-profit work, focusing on the needs of women and children. She has lived in some of the most culturally diverse places of the world, including Johannesburg, London and Honolulu. Now in the Los Angeles area, she shares a home with her husband, daughter, two cats, a dog and a tortoise.
About the Award
THE JANET HEIDINGER KAFKA PRIZE FOR FICTION BY AN AMERICAN WOMAN
Since 1976, the Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender and Women's Studies
and the Department of English at the University of Rochester have awarded
the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for fiction by an American woman. The
idea for the prize came out of the personal grief of the friends and
family of a fine young editor who was killed in an automobile accident
just as her career was beginning to achieve its promise of excellence.
She was 30 years old, and those who knew her believed she would do much
to further the causes of literature and women. Her family, her friends,
and her professional associates in the publishing industry created the
endowment from which the prize is bestowed, in memory of Janet Heidinger
Kafka and the literary standards and personal ideals for which she stood.
Each year a substantial cash prize is awarded annually to a woman who
is a USA citizen, and who has written the best book-length work of prose
fiction, whether novel, short stories, or experimental writing. We are
particularly interested in calling attention to the work of a promising
but less established writer.
About the Committee:
This year's Committee members were:
Kathy McGowan, Rush Rhees Library,
Terry Platt, Biology and
Juliet Sullivan, Center for Academic Support