Townsend Prize for Fiction Ceremony

The Townsend Prize for Fiction is Georgia’s most prestigious literary prize, awarded every two years to an outstanding work of fiction by a Georgia writer.  Alice Walker, Ha Jin, Ferrol Sams, Terry Kay, and Kathryn Stockett are all past recipients.

Somehow I ended up on the list of ten finalists for this year’s Townsend Prize, so I put on a suit and tie and drove with my wife Kathy to Decatur.  I live 9.5 miles from Decatur, and it took us almost an hour and a half to get there, the same amount of time it usually takes me to get to Chattanooga. Gotta love Atlanta traffic. 

The Townsend Prize ceremony was in the DeKalb History Center, located in the historic courthouse in downtown Decatur. In the lobby, we checked in and got our nametags–mine with a stylized “T” on it, designating me as a finalist–and perused the books on display, all of them written by the ten finalists. Joshilyn Jackson arrived with her husband, and we reintroduced ourselves.  Kate Whitman, who works for the Atlanta History Center, arrived shortly afterwards. Kate manages the reading series at the Margaret Mitchell House, where Kathy and I met her last fall when I read there, and she and Kathy instantly took to each other. Anna Schachner, editor of The Chattahoochee Review and one of the MC’s for the evening, stopped to say hello and congratulate me on my nomination. Then Joshilyn corralled us and led the way upstairs to the bar.

Upstairs in what was once the old courtroom, wide windows showed views of downtown Decatur on one side and the skyscrapers of downtown Atlanta on the other. A musical trio warmed up in the corner. Tables were set up throughout the chamber, and there were two separate bars. (Writers.) We got wine and searched for our table, and when we found it we ran into Tom McHaney, a retired GSU professor who, along with his wife Pearl, runs the Georgia Center for the Book. Dr. McHaney served on my dissertation committee, and we chatted about Melville and Faulkner. Kathy and I went to find food and ran into Daren Wang, another Townsend finalist and a friend who was on an extended book tour for his debut, The Hidden Light of Northern Fires.

Authors, I’ve found, are typically generous and encouraging souls. I wasn’t disappointed when we finally returned to our table and met some of the other finalists, including Stacia Pelletier, Man Martin, and Jonathan Rabb.  All of them were very pleasant and chatty. If they were nervous about the award, they fooled me. Of course we all wanted to win, but I knew I was lucky just to be nominated, and besides, direct competitions between authors feel awkward.  Jonathan Rabb and I talked about that, agreeing that it was a bit embarrassing. A young man with neatly slicked-back hair came over from the next table and stuck out his hand and introduced himself as Tom Mullen.  He was a Townsend finalist for Lightning Men, the second in his series about the first black police officers in Atlanta in the 1940s and ’50s.  He asked if I was local, and after chatting for a few minutes he went to go meet some of the other authors, but not before saying we should get together sometime over coffee.

Then Julia Franks stopped by–we had met at the Berry Fleming Festival in Augusta, where Julia and Daren and I had sat and talked in between sessions, and Julia had been very friendly and kind to me. She had also been a high school English teacher, at Lovett, and I had joked with her about my fear of becoming like the lead character in Mr. Holland’s Opus, the music teacher who composes his orchestral piece for decades while teaching. This night, Julia hugged me and told me she had enjoyed my book very much–“a real page-turner,” she said. “You are the emperor of similes,” she added.  I think I’ll print that out and hang it over my desk.

I sat down and finished eating my dinner when my phone dinged–a good luck text from my friend Clarissa, who had given me a Blackburne t-shirt at my launch party.  This was followed by another text, this one from Brian Panowich, the author of Bull Mountain, who I had also met in Augusta and who had told me he loved Shadow of the Lions.  He wished me luck and added, “Have fun–enjoy the moment.” I showed both texts to Kathy, and suddenly my eyes stung and I had to blink back tears.  I’m a high school English teacher who cries at sunsets and supermarket openings, but at this moment I realized that I was now a legitimate author, an honest-to-God novelist, who was drinking wine and rubbing elbows with Georgia literary royalty, as Anna Schachner would later pronounce from the podium.

The evening festivities started with introductions and thank-yous from Joe Davich, followed by Ron Aiken, president of the Atlanta Writers Club.  Ron introduced the winner of the AWC scholarship, a young woman who was going to be a journalist.  We all clapped and cheered for her, and I remember thinking we really needed people like her in today’s world.  Then Anna Schachner got up and, contending with a wonky mic, she introduced Brad Watson, author of Miss Jane and the keynote speaker for the evening.  Brad looks like most folks’ idea of what an author looks like, bearded and wearing a sports jacket and looking very slightly rumpled.  He held up a printed copy of a speech and said, “I’m throwing this away.  It’s no good.”  He then went off-script in a meandering, funny speech about how he improbably became a writer, including an attempt to set fire to a box of his own short stories that didn’t quite go as planned.  I’m tempted to say that he mumbled, but his articulation was very clear–he just spoke low and softly, and we all leaned in to hear him.

The moment finally came when Brad finished and sat down and Anna got up to announce the winner.  All the writers in my line of vision sat up a little straighter, but we were also all smiling. “All the finalists are winners,” Anna said, and although it could sound corny or clichéd, that evening it rang true.  I certainly felt like a winner just beig there.