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23 January 2006 Tim Gautreaux to receive Longwood's Dos Passos Prize for Literature
The Prize, administered by Longwood’s Department of English and Modern Languages, will be awarded Wednesday, Feb. 15, at 8 p.m. in Wygal Auditorium. Gautreaux will read from his work, and a dessert reception will follow in the adjacent Haga Room. Gautreaux is the author of two collections of short fiction, Same, Place, Same Things and Welding with Children, chosen by the The New York Times as a notable book of the year, and two novels, The Next Step in the Dance, winner of the 1999 Southeastern Booksellers Award for best novel, and The Clearing, named to several top 10 lists, including the USA Today list of the top 10 books for 2003. He taught creative writing at Southeastern Louisiana University for 30 years before retiring in 2002. “Tim Gautreaux has, like William Faulkner, cultivated his own ‘little postage of stamp of soil,’ in his case the homeland of south Louisiana Cajuns,” said Martha Cook, professor of English, who chairs of the Dos Passos Prize Jury. “In his fiction he gives voice to those blue-collar Southerners who strive to right the wrongs, to relieve the suffering they encounter in their everyday lives.” The son of a tugboat captain, Gautreaux was born and grew up in Morgan City, La., which he has described as a “tough oil-patch town,” and is a longtime resident of Hammond, La. He is a graduate of Nicholls State University and has a Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina, where he wrote his dissertation under the late novelist James Dickey. Gautreaux’s novels and short stories have been “praised by critics for their complex characters, vividly drawn southern Louisiana locales, and Cajun speech,” according to Contemporary Authors. “Although his blue-collar characters make mistakes and suffer for them, Gautreaux offers them, as well as readers, hope for renewal…Themes of moral dilemmas and redemption come naturally to him.” The Dos Passos Prize, which includes a $2,000 cash award and a medal, is awarded annually to a writer whose works demonstrate one or more the following characteristics: an intense and original exploration of specifically American themes, an experimental quality, and a wide range of literary forms. Past recipients have included Tom Wolfe, Ernest Gaines, Lee Smith and the late Shelby Foote. The jury for this year’s prize consisted of last year’s recipient, novelist Maureen Howard, and Margaret Donovan Bauer, editor of the North Carolina Literary Review and the author of William Faulkner’s Legacy: “What Shadow, What Stain, What Mark,” in addition to Dr. Cook, who also is a member of the Prize Committee. The other Committee members are Craig Challender, professor of English, and Mary Carroll-Hackett, assistant professor of English. The Prize is funded by the Longwood University Foundation and the office of the Vice President for Academic Affairs, with support from the College of Arts and Sciences and the Department of English and Modern Languages. |
Tim Gautreaux, whose short stories and novels draw upon his working-class Cajun background, has been selected for the 25th John Dos Passos Prize for Literature from Longwood University.