Georgia Center for the Book Awards

The Georgia Center for the Book is the sponsor or co-sponsor of the major literary awards presented in the state of Georgia. That includes the Lindberg Award and the Townsend Prize, both presented biennally, and the Lillian Smith Award, given every year.

The Lindberg Award

The Stanley W. Lindberg Award is given every other year to a person who has made important contributions to the literary culture of Georgia through a lifetime of work and accomplishment. It is a prestigious career achievement award that honors the late Stanley W. Lindberg, editor of The Georgia Review 1977-2000.

The 2007 recipient of the Lindberg Award was Terry Kay, a Georgia Writers Hall of Fame inductee and the author of a dozen works of fiction. Kay received the award Saturday, December 1, 2007, at the Georgia Museum of Art in Athens. The special presentation ceremony was hosted by St. John Flynn of Georgia public Broadcasting and featured an introduction of Kay by his long-time friend, Georgia novelist Anne Rivers Siddons.

Kay, born in Hart County in 1938, has produced a substantial body of work honored by critics and acclaimed by readers all over America. But he also has been among the foremost advocates for improving the state of literature in Georgia, and he has frequently served as a literary mentor and inspiration to thousands of Georgians, young and old.

His first novel, The Years the Lights Came On, was published in 1976. His books since include After Eli, Dark Thirty, The Kidnapping of Aaron Greene, Taking Lottie Home, The Runaway, Special K, The Valley of Light, To Whom the Angels Spoke, Shadow Song, and earlier this year The Book of Marie. His best-known book, To Dance with the White Dog, has been an international bestseller and was made into a popular television miniseries.

Kay is a member of the advisory council of the Georgia Center for the Book, and To Dance with the White Dog was chosen as one of the "Top 25 Books All Georgians should Read" in 2005.

The previous winners of the Lindberg Award are:

• Pat Conroy (1999), author of best-selling novels including Beach Music and The Prince of Tides;
• Marion Montgomery (2001), writer/critic at the University of Georgia;
• Bettie Sellers (2003), former Poet Laureate for the state of Georgia;
• Tina McElroy Ansa (2005), author of novels including Ugly Ways and Baby of the Family.

Stanley W. Lindberg, a native of Pennsylvania, came to the University of Georgia in 1977 to serve as associate professor of humanities and editor of The Georgia Review. He was appointed a full professor in 1981. During his tenure, he wrote or edited 10 books including The Annotated McGuffey and The Legacy of Erskine Caldwell, and The Georgia Review became one of the nation's most respected and honored small literary journals. He died in 2000.

Recipients of the Lindberg Award are chosen by the Center for the Book with a committee chaired by Judy Long, editor-of-chief of Hill Street Press in Athens.

The Townsend Prize

The Townsend Prize for Fiction is awarded every other year to the Georgia writer judged to have produced the best work of fiction (novel or short stories) in the previous two years. It was created in 1981 in honor of the founding editor of Atlanta magazine, Jim Townsend, who served as a mentor to many Georgia authors.

The award was administered by Georgia State University from 1981-1997 and after that by Georgia Perimeter College and the Chattahoochee Review. Currently, the Writers Institute at Georgia Perimeter sponsors the award with the Center for the Book.

The 2008 winner is Renee Dodd for her debut novel, A Cabinet of Wonders. She was honored in ceremonies April 24 at the Courthouse on the Square in Decatur. Set in the South of 1927, her novel focuses on co-joined twins in a traveling carnival’s freak show. Critics hailed the author’s distinctive voice and the originality of her storytelling, with Library Journal calling it “graceful, smooth and intelligent ... Highly recommended.”

Born in Atlanta and now living in Milledgeville, Dodd is the granddaughter of Bobby Dodd, the legendary Hall of Fame football coach for Georgia Tech. She earned an M.F.A. in fiction writing at the University of Houston, and writes and teaches part-time at Georgia College and State University.

The nominees for the 2008 Townsend Prize as chosen by the Center for the Book and Chattahoochee Review are:

Baby Brother's Blues

Cleage, Pearl

The Edict

Cupp, Bob

A Cabinet of Wonders

Dodd, Renee

Forgiveness

Grimsley, Jim

Women I’ve Known: New and Selected Stories

Johnson, Greg

Stray

Joseph, Sheri

The Book of Marie

Kay, Terry

Them

McCall, Nathan

Your Body is Changing

Pendarvis, Jack

Beyond Reach

Slaugher, Karin

Previous winners of the Townsend Prize are:

Children, My Children (1982)

Celestine Sibley

The Color Purple (1984)

Alice Walker

The Heart of a Distant Forest (1986)

Philip Lee Williams

And Venus is Blue (1986)

Mary Hood

Alice (1989)

Sara Flanigan

The Lives of the Dead (1990)

Charlie Smith

When All the World Was Young (1991)

Ferrol Sams

The Laughing Place (1994)

Pam Durban

Some Personal Papers (1996)

JoAllen Bradham

The Sweet Everlasting (1998)

Judson Mitcham

Daughter of My People (2000)

James Kilgo

The Bridegroom: Stories (2002)

Ha Jin

The Valley of Light (2004)

Terry Kay

Sabbath Creek (2006)

Judson Mitcham

A Cabinet of Wonders (2008)

Renee Dodd

The Lillian Smith Award

The Lillian Smith Award was established by the Atlanta-based Southern Regional Council shortly after the death of the Georgia author in 1966. The award is presented annually to authors whose books are outstanding creative achievements which demonstrate through literary merit and moral vision an honest representation of the South, its people, its problems, and its promises.

In 2004, the Southern Regional council entered into a partnership with the University of Georgia Libraries, which now administers the awards. In 2007, the Georgia Center for the Book joined the partnership as a co-sponsor to help the awards reach a wider audience.

The 2007 winners of the Lillian Smith Award were Natasha Trethewey for Native Guard, a book of poetry which also won the Pulitzer Prize, and Matthew D. Lassiter for The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South. Trethewey is an associate professor of creative writing at Emory University in Atlanta, and Lassiter is assistant professor of history at the University of Michigan.

The 2008 Lillian Smith Award will be presented at the AJC Decatur Book Festival on August 31.

For information on the award and a complete list of previous winners, please go to http://www.libs.uga.edu/hargrett/lilliansmith/smith.html