Arkansas fiction writer Jen Fawkes is the recipient of the 2021 Porter Fund Literary Prize. The Porter Prize is presented annually to an Arkansas writer with a substantial and impressive body of work that merits enhanced recognition. Past winners of the Porter Prize include Mara Leveritt, Morris Arnold, Kevin Brockmeier and Jo McDougall, the current Poet Laureate of Arkansas. The $2,000 prize makes it one of the state’s most lucrative as well as prestigious literary awards. Eligibility requires an Arkansas connection.
Fawkes was honored at an award ceremony with a reception on Thursday, October 7 at the Main Library’s Darragh Center in downtown Little Rock. The event is free and open to the public.
The Porter Prize was founded in 1984 by novelist Jack Butler and novelist and lawyer Phil McMath to honor Dr. Ben Kimpel. Butler and McMath were students of Kimpel, noted professor of English at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. At Kimpel’s request, the prize is named in honor of Kimpel’s mother, Gladys Crane Kimpel Porter. The annual prize, $2,000, has been given to 37 poets, novelists, non-fiction writers and playwrights.
Fawkes was notified of her award by Little Rock writer Kevin Brockmeier, the 2003 recipient of the Porter Prize.
“As a lapsed Arkansan who returned to the state after two decades 'off' to find that this wild, wooly place is the only place I want to live, I was thrilled to learn that I won the 2021 Porter Prize,” said Fawkes. “And when I discovered that Dr. Ben Kimpel, for whom the Prize is named, wrote his doctoral dissertation on Herman Melville – one of my most cherished literary forebears – I was positively ecstatic. What an honor to be recognized by my home state, and to join this roster of Arkansas authors whose work I so admire.”
Jen Fawkes’s debut book, Mannequin and Wife (LSU Press), won two 2020 Foreword INDIE Awards (Gold in Short Stories) and is a current finalist for a 2020 Shirley Jackson Award. It was also named one of Largehearted Boy's Favorite Short Story Collections of 2020 and a Best Book of 2020 by The Brooklyn Rail. Jen’s second book, Tales the Devil Told Me, won the 2020 Press 53 Award for Short Fiction and is forthcoming in October 2021. Jen's work has appeared in One Story, Crazyhorse, Lit Hub, The Iowa Review, Best Small Fictions 2020, and elsewhere. She is the winner of numerous fiction prizes, from The Pinch, Salamander, Washington Square Review, and others. Jen holds a PhD from the University of Cincinnati, an MFA from Hollins University, and a BA from Columbia University. She lives in Little Rock, Arkansas, with her husband and several imaginary friends.
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