Welcome!
Congratulations on your acceptance into the prestigious ranks of the Fotherington-Vanderbilt Weiss Literary Arts Award Selection Committee!
We have prepared the following guidelines to aid you in your selection of a Fotherington-Vanderbilt Weiss Literary Arts Award shortlist. Please read them closely and follow them throughout your selection process.
Residency Requirement
We believe that, as New York City is the world capital of the literary arts community, a strong Fotherington-Vanderbilt Weiss Literary Arts Award shortlist should contain 50 – 60% writers affiliated with New York City. This affiliation can come through birthplace, college attendance, or current residence. For the purposes of the Fotherington-Vanderbilt Weiss Literary Arts Award, New York City will be defined as Brooklyn and Manhattan.
Diversity Guidelines
The shortlist must contain a literary artist who comes from one of the following communities:
– African-American
– Other “Writers of Color”
– Blue-collar
– Foreign-born
– Southern
– LGBTQ
– Female
The Fotherington-Vanderbilt Weiss Literary Arts Foundation is strongly committed to promoting diversity in the literary arts, and our Diversity Guidelines help ensure that we continue to advance this cause; we regret that the Fotherington-Vanderbilt Weiss Literary Arts Award Selection Committee will be unable to consider more than one writer who meets a Diversity requirement, with the exception of white female authors, who may comprise 25 – 35% of the shortlist (space permitting). Please make your selections accordingly.
Illicit content
Graphic depictions of sexual content are permissible so long as the sex is joyless, deviant, or between an older male literature/creative writing professor and a young female student. (The latter is strongly encouraged.)
Preferred themes
Preference should be given to stories that contain the following themes (as many as possible):
– Alienation
– Writers struggling to write
– The dysfunctional relationships and thwarted hopes of 20-somethings
– The dysfunctional relationships and bitter regrets of 40-somethings
– Dinner parties
Genre fiction
Genre fiction is not appropriate for the Fotherington-Vanderbilt Weiss Literary Arts Award. We are aware that it is increasingly difficult to distinguish well-written genre fiction from literary fiction, so we have prepared the following spotter’s guide. Be on the lookout for stories that may contain:
– Quests by which a boy becomes a man
– Corpses found in windowless rooms locked from the inside
– Dragons and/or spaceships and/or zombies and/or vampires (Werewolves okay as long as clearly metaphorical)
– Romance plots that are happily resolved
– Nerds
If you are considering nominating a story that contains genre elements, check to see if the author has been compared by critics to Michael Chabon and/or Jonathan Lethem. If so, this is probably a safe candidate. If not, you may have mistakenly admired genre fiction. Please disregard all such stories.
In Conclusion
We know that you are all suitably conscious of the honor that comes with being a Fotherington-Vanderbilt Weiss Literary Arts Award Selection Committee Member, or you would not have been chosen by the Fotherington-Vanderbilt Weiss Literary Arts Award Selection Committee Member Selection Committee. However modest it may be, we look forward to your individual contribution to our collective legacy.
Tags: awards, books, deviant sex, fotherington-vanderbilt weiss, julia hayton, literary fiction, writing
long books that take place entirely at dinner parties where 40-something white “nice guys” eat too rich food and bemoan how terribly life has treated them. oh so many regrets, not nearly enough scotch. (i imagine they probably went to college together; the drunker they get, the more they talk about the good old days when they were young and full of life)
basically a woody allen movie in book form.
I wonder if Philip Roth and Woody Allen are actually the same person. It could explain why Philip Roth spends so much time in seclusion in the woods.
long books that take place entirely at dinner parties where 40-something white "nice guys" eat too rich food and bemoan how terribly life has treated them. oh so many regrets, not nearly enough scotch. (i imagine they probably went to college together; the drunker they get, the more they talk about the good old days when they were young and full of life)
basically a woody allen movie in book form.
If you have selected the book by the nice white lady who is also an LGBTQ author, please be aware that her work must have an almost mystifying level of sexualized violence in it, particularly viewed in context with her usual practice of well-researched and well-realized historical fiction – and therefore genre. Disregard.
In the event that said book is excellent anyway, award prize to utterly unmemorable middle-aged white man in a hat who conforms more closely to the published guidelines.
http://www.themanbookerprize.com/man-booker-prize…
Ugh, I’m dreading Jim Crace’s inevitable win over the much better and far more interesting We Need New Names this year.
I’d say “Be fair, Colm clearly has a chance” but then it was a name like Colm on a book with Mary in the title.
Non-dry response: I KNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW *wail*
Graphic depictions of sexual content are permissible so long as the sex is […] between an older male literature/creative writing professor and a young female student.
This is, no joke, why I stopped reading fiction by straight white men when I was in college. It made my life a lot better. I make a few exceptions now based on past experience or trusty recommendations, but, really, there’s not enough time in the world to read everything, so I’m going to miss someone anyway… and it might as well be a straight white American dude. Side effect: I don’t get to read much sci-fi any more.
Preference should be given to stories that contain the following themes (as many as possible):
– Alienation
– Writers struggling to write
– The dysfunctional relationships and thwarted hopes of 20-somethings
– The dysfunctional relationships and bitter regrets of 40-somethings
– Dinner parties
Ahhhhh but Americanah contained all of these things!