Kirkwood Prize

I’ve been nominated for the James Kirkwood Prize in Creative Writing. 

Administered by the UCLA Writers’ Program, the nomination is for a prose work, Away with Us, that I am developing under the auspices of their Writing Certificate, With $2,500, $5,000 and $10,000 awarded for 3rd, 2nd, and first prize respectively, it would be amazing to win, but as all shortlisted artists like to say, it’s an honor just to be nominated.

I have enjoyed studying for the Writing Certificate, which is akin to an MFA, requiring seven 3-unit courses, taken over 2 years. The classes happened over Zoom, and in person, on the leafy Westwood campus in Los Angeles, (a location that entered my imagination as a teenager when I discovered Jim Morrison of The Doors studied there). I have only the final ‘Capstone’ class remaining, which starts in the Fall semester and is being run by poet and memoirist Brian Sonia-Wallace.

Taking classes with an array of celebrated writers has been an extraordinary privilege, the range of their experience, from emerging talents like novelist Chris L. Terry (Black Card, 2019), and short story author, Ploi Pirapokin, to the established Francesca Lia Block, creator of the popular Weetzie Bat series, allowed for a wide diversity of perspectives on my work.

I also gained an immense amount from taking classes in differing genres, where Ploi Pirapokin examined the art of revision, with particular attention to the short story, Rick Bursky (The Soup of Something Missing), offered an introduction to poetry that was both eye-opening and hugely entertaining. Even though I have taught screenwriting for many years in colleges like NYFA, and The Studio School, I decided to take an optional screenwriting class with Andrew Knauer (The Last Stand, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger), and was not disappointed. The certificate reminded me of the common requirements of all forms of narrative writing, that is, create engaging characters, craft artful sentences, and unfurl a compelling story. 

So far, I believe I have learned the most from Caroline Leavitt’s approach to story structure, and Aatif Rashid’s breakdown of the different elements of writing the novel. Caroline is the New York Times bestselling author of Is This Tomorrow and Pictures of You, as well as 8 other books, including her latest, Cruel Beautiful World but she cites much of the story structure work of John Truby; while the author of Portrait of Sebastian Khan, Aatif Rashid, was extremely deliberate and sensitive in isolating the individual components of an elegantly composed novel.

I have to thank my employer Bertelsmann for funding my participation in the program, I am very grateful, and being the largest publisher in the world (owners of Penguin Random House), maybe they’ll publish my book one day!