Joanna Scott, author and University of Rochester professor, has received the 2006 Andrew Eiseman Writers Award for her novel Liberation. The award was created to honor writers in the Rochester community who have been published during the previous calendar year.
A presentation of the award and a reception will be held from 5 to 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 18, in the Hawkins-Carlson Room of Rush Rhees Library on the University's River Campus. It is free and open to the public. Parking is available in the Library Lot.
Scott, the Roswell S. Burrows Professor of English at the University, has consistently earned critical acclaim for her vivid prose, insights into human behavior and relationships, and lush descriptions. In Liberation (Little, Brown & Co., 2005), Scott takes the reader to the island of Elba through the eyes of a 10-year-old girl named Adriana Nardi. Adriana played a large role in Scott's previous novel Tourmaline, which was a finalist in the fiction category for the 23rd annual Los Angeles Times Book Award. In Liberation, Adriana is now a 70-year-old woman, married and living in New York, reflecting on her childhood and her previous infatuation with an AWOL African soldier.
Scott is also the author of The Manikin, a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1997; Arrogance, which was a recipient of the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award, the Lillian Fairchild Award, and a nomination for the PEN/Faulkner Award; as well as Fading, My Parmacheene Belle; Make Believe; and The Closest Possible Union.
A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Scott also is the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, a Guggenheim fellowship, and the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction.
Eiseman, a 1979 graduate of the University of Rochester, created the award in order to increase engagement between the River Campus Libraries and the literary community. By honoring local writers who live within a 50-mile radius of Rochester, Eiseman believes that local residents will continue to view the University libraries as a community resource.
Scott is the first professor from the University of Rochester to win the award, which was established in 2005. She will receive a $1,000 prize.