Ongoing
For a number of years, publishing has been dominated by commercial fiction. Literary fiction novels and short story collections by small presses or independent authors have little chance of being noticed by reviewers or placed on bookstore shelves. Even the literary fiction written by relatively well-known writers published by big houses has been pushed to the side by pseudo-literary fiction — written and reviewed by those who don’t know the difference between thought and sentimentality, poetry and the use of adjectives — such that the meaning of “literary” is lost. With the way the publishing system is currently organized, books aren’t given much time in front of judges and audiences. Those that don’t make it immediately are tossed in the remaindered bin. A deep pity, as literary fiction is slow-growing and takes time to find its audience. No one in the literary fiction community denies this, and yet there are no awards for the best five-year-old novel; no reviewers interested in what came out last year.
To help remedy this situation, Dactyl Foundation is putting together a list of books by living authors that we consider “literary” and offering a $1000 award to eligible authors.
Any one can submit a work for consideration, the author, the publisher or any reader. The work must be published in some form, whether through a traditional publishing house, self-published, print-on-demand, or e-book. It must be available for purchase through a bookstore, either as new or as used. No single short stories are eligible for consideration. Short stories must appear in a collection.
By “literary” we mean that the author pays attention to, for example, the sounds, double meanings, etymologies, allusiveness, or rhythms of language. Literary novels are prose poetry, at the sentence level and also at a larger level where themes, characters and events should also relate poetically. The subject of the work is engaged with something that might be called weighty, questioning, for example, how we think, how we make meaning, why things happen the way they do, how we decide what’s right or wrong, or musing over what might have been.
Initial submission must include:
A short review of the work (published or not), written by someone other than the author. A one or two-page excerpt from the work.
Send to program director Tori Alexander alexander@dactyl.org
If the initial submission is approved you will be asked to submit the complete work.
How the list will work:
The first few works will be discussed and chosen by Dactyl Foundation’s CompostModern Forum members. Consideration will also be given to works that are voted best by the literary fiction community at large on the Dactyl Review website, created and managed by and for the literary fiction community. Chosen authors will then help choose additional works worthy of recognition.
[...] 28, 2010 in Literary Fiction As part of an effort underway at the Dactyl Foundation where I am a director, I am offering to review works of literary fiction put out by small presses [...]
[...] works reviewed on the website are automatically considered for Dactyl Foundation’s undersung literary fiction award, a prize of $1000, which is open to all books that have not sold more than 20,000 copies. This, we [...]
[...] Dactyl is also currently running a Literary Award program and information on that can be found here. [...]