First Fiction Prize to Pipkin; Howard Cops Perkins Award
By Michael Coffey -- Publishers Weekly, 11/10/2009 7:36:00 AM
A first novel about a forest fire accidentally set by Henry David Thoreau won the Center for Fiction’s 2009 First Novel Prize in a ceremony held at the tony New York Tennis & Racquet club Monday night. John Pipkin’s The Woodsburner, published by Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, was the winner in a strong short list that included Paul Harding’s Tinkers (Bellevue Literary Press), American Rust by Phillip Meyer (Spiegel and Grau), The Cradle by Patrick Somerville (Little, Brown), and The Vagrants by Yiun Li (Random House). Last year’s winner, Hannah Tinti, presented the award, which comes with a $10,000 cash prize.
The annual Maxwell E. Perkins Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Field of Fiction was awarded to Doubleday executive editor Gerald Howard, rendering the night a sweep for Doubleday. Peter Ginna, Bloomsbury editorial director and chair of the Center, hailed Howard as “the champion of the transgressive,” before introducing the edgy Chuck Palahniuk, attired, or so he said, in “water buffalo leather pants.” Palahniuk , who has done 10 books with Howard, presented his editor with a leather-bound, gold-embossed, one-of-a-kind copy of The Fight Club, their first book together, which went on to bestsellerdom and was made into a popular film.
Howard thanked the many people who had hired him over the years, from John Thornton at NAL, to Kathryn Court at Penguin, Don Lamm and Ed Barber “at the formerly genteel Norton,” and Steve Rubin at Doubleday. “What keeps us going,” he said, “is simply a need to understand what is happening.”
Gabrielle Bamberger, vice-chair at the Center, announced that starting next year, the First Fiction Prize will be renamed The Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize, thanks to “the very generous support” of writer and board member Nancy Dunnan, who’s father, Ray Flaherty, was a pioneering journalist with the Chicago Tribune.
The Center for Fiction, which was founded in 1820 as the Mercantile Library, is “the only cultural institution in the U.S. devoted to the art of fiction,” said Ginna.
