Gival Press is pleased to announce that Lowell Mick White of College Station, Texas has won the 4th Annual Gival Press Novel Award for his novel That Demon Life. White will receive $3,000.00 and his novel will be published in 2009. His manuscript was read anonymously and chosen by the final judge John Domini.
Advance praise:
\”The slacker blonde has found her muse! In the hilariously disinclined attorney Linda, a no-account Austinite whose idea of legal research is a rerun of Law & Order, White has given us a transgendered update of the madcap Confederacy of Dunces. Indeed, you could say Dunces is done one better in That Demon Life, because this swift-moving new picaresque of work-avoidance takes us into the realm of sex. Amid the complications that flower so colorfully out of the death of Linda’s pet bird—you’ll scent a fresh and nutty bloom every few pages—we are treated to the kind of lust-besotted escapades that leave a county judge stumbling naked through the urban sprawl, poking up tabloid writers rather than Lone Star rattlesnakes. Amid all the unhinged carrying on, I’ll be darned if our Linda’s take-it-or-leave-it blasé doesn’t prove a moral center, and deliver a riotous epiphany.\”
—John Domini, judge for the Gival Press Novel Award & professor of English and Creative Writing at Grinnell College and author of several publications, including The Tomb on the Periphery
Biography:
White, currently a PhD student at Texas A&M University, is the author of Long Time Ago Good, which will be published by Slough Press. In addition, he has stories published in over two dozen journals, most recently in Callaloo, Iron House Literary Review, and Short Story. In 1998 he was awarded the Dobie-Paisano Fellowship by the University of Texas at Austin and the Texas Institute of Letters.
Finalists:
Patchwork by Marc Graham of Castle Rock, Colorado.
Fire Hollow by Melissa Zobel of Old Mystic, Connecticut.
Imperfect Enjoyment by Kirk Combe of Granville, Ohio.
All the Diamonds in the World by Mark Guscin of La Coruna, Spain.
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