Wiley Cash’s novel, “A Land More Kind Than Home” has been shortlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, which comes with a $25,000 award. The award goes to the author whose debut work — a first novel or short story collection, published in 2012 — represents distinguished literary achievement and suggests great promise.
Others on the shortlist are “A Naked Singularity,” by Sergio de la Pava; “My Only Wife,” by Jac Jemic; “Happiness is a Chemical in the Brain,” by Lucia Perillo; and “Battleborn,” by Claire Vaye Watkins.
PEN American Center, the largest branch of a literary and human rights organization, announced the shortlists and judges for the 2013 PEN Literary Awards. For more than 50 years, these awards have honored outstanding voices in literature across such fields as fiction, poetry, science writing, essays, sports writing, biography, children’s literature, translation and drama.
The final winners and runners-up will be announced later this summer and will be honored at the 2013 PEN Literary Awards Ceremony on Oct. 21 at City Uuniversity of New York Graduate Center in New York City.
Cash won the fiction category of the 2013 Southern Independent Booksellers Association awards, as well.
Cash’s book was one of the featured selections for the 2012 Summer Reading Challenge.
Another name familiar to area readers is Jay Erskine Leutze, who made two visits to Salisbury with his gripping non-fiction account of saving a mountain in western North Carolina, “Stand Up that Mountain.” Leutze won the nonfiction award from SIBA. Ron Rash’s book, “The Cove,” another 2012 Summer Reading Challenge selection, was nominated along with Cash and several other fiction works.
North Carolina poet Kathryn Stripling Byers won the poetry award for “Descent.”
The Cabarrus County Public Library, Kannapolis Branch is planning a Bookends Book Discussion of “The Dry Grass of August” by Anna Jean Mayhew. “The Dry Grass of August” is a coming-of-age story set during the summer of 1954, a summer in which Jubie takes a family beach trip that will change her life forever. The book is a beautifully written literary novel.
Both dates will contain the same presentation; just choose one that fits your schedule best: Tuesday, Aug. 13 at 6 p.m., or Wednesday, Aug. 14 at 10:30 a.m.
Mayhew will be back at the library on Aug. 17 at 1 p.m. for an event hosted by the Kannapolis Friends of the Library Inc. A book signing will follow with the author. This is free and open to the public.
Call 704-920-1180 for more information.