The Amanda Davis Highwire Fiction Award

I met Amanda Davis in 1999, and, as I’ve written before, she was not just a wonderful writer but a gracious, welcoming member of New York’s literary community, and her death in a tragic plane crash in 2003 was felt keenly by everyone in the publishing community who knew her. Her friends at McSweeney’s established an bi-annual $2,500 grant in her memory:

“This memorial award is intended to aid a young woman writer of 32 years or younger who both embodies Amanda’s personal strengths—warmth, generosity, a passion for community—and who needs some time to finish a book in progress. The book in progress needn’t be thematically or stylistically close to Amanda’s work, but we would be lying if we said we weren’t looking to support another writer of Amanda’s outrageous lyricism and heart.”

Applications are now being accepted for the 2010 award. The previous winners are Shivani Manghnani, Hannah Pittard, and Jessica Anthony.

6 September 2010 | uncategorized |