PEN USA Awards Debra Marquart the 2007 Creative Nonfiction Award
“If you dare think that nothing really happens out there in the middle of nowhere, read this gorgeous book about a family and their land, about the girl who strained against both and finally left. From the first words, you’ll feel a taproot set down in your heart, one that won’t let go because the story is as old as the land itself. You know the one--that story of mothers and fathers and daughters and sons, that rough and tender story of the ties that bind." —Lee Martin, author of From Our House and The Bright Forever
Debra Marquart's memoir, The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere, has been awarded the PEN USA 2007 Creative Nonfiction Award. PEN USA’s annual awards program, established in 1982, is a unique “Best in the West” competition that recognizes literary excellence in ten categories: fiction, creative nonfiction, research nonfiction, poetry, children’s literature, translation, journalism, drama, teleplay, and screenplay. See LA Observed for the complete list of winners.
Each fall, PEN USA calls for submissions of work produced or published in that calendar year by writers living west of the Mississippi River. Entries in the ten categories are reviewed and judged by panels of distinguished writers, critics and editors. Winners are honored at the PEN USA Literary Awards Festival on November 6, 2007, in Los Angeles.
Other News from Debra Marquart:
Invited Speaker, South Dakota Festival of the Book, Deadwood, South Dakota. September 28 - 30, 2007.
William Sloane Fellow in Nonfiction, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vermont. August 15 - 25, 2007.