Saturday, March 29, 2008

Spring is Award Season





I LOVE magazines, all kinds. (Could that be why I majored in magazine journalism at college?) And while I'm not all that much influenced by industry awards, I do like to see what's being singled out.

The American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) has already named the winners in their Annual Writing Awards Program, and you can see the list
here.

The American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) has also announced
finalists for the National Magazine Awards (also known as the Ellies); winners to be announced May 1. The list of finalists for their many categories of Best Magazine Writing is over at Bookslut with links to all those you read online.

I was especially interested, of course, in the Essay category, and was so excited to see that one of the best essays I can remember reading in The New Yorker last year,
Parallel Play, by Tim Page, made the cut.

Beyond the wonderful prose and terrific storytelling woven into this essay, it hit me for all kinds of personal family reasons, and also put me in mind of the book-length essay,
The Invention of Solitude, by Paul Auster, which I was required to read (and annotate) the first month of my MFA program. I recall disliking the work intensely at the time, but in retrospect (don't you just love hindsight?), it was one of the most important things I've read in the last two years, in terms of influence on my own writing.

See what you like on the lists.

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