{"id":194672,"date":"2016-10-31T14:01:45","date_gmt":"2016-10-31T18:01:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=194672"},"modified":"2022-07-19T15:44:54","modified_gmt":"2022-07-19T19:44:54","slug":"author-mia-alvar-receives-2016-kafka-prize-194672","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/author-mia-alvar-receives-2016-kafka-prize-194672\/","title":{"rendered":"Author Mia Alvar receives 2016 Kafka Prize"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the 40th anniversary of its inception, the Janet Heininger Kafka Prize recognized a short story collection: Mia Alvar\u2019s debut work of fiction, In the Country<\/em>.* Since 1976, the Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Women\u2019s Studies<\/a><\/strong> and the Department of English<\/a><\/strong> have awarded the annual prize to a promising but less established American woman who has written the best book-length work of prose fiction.<\/p>\n

Alvar\u2019s collection \u201cstood out as the selection committee\u2019s unanimous choice among almost 150 entries for its ability to craft a cohesive, intricately wrought world out of nine separate narratives,\u201d explained Professor of Spanish Beth J\u00f6rgensen. She\u2014along with fellow committee members Katherine Mannheimer, associate professor of English, and Jason Peck, visiting assistant professor of German\u2014took only five minutes to agree on this year\u2019s selection.<\/p>\n

In her introductory remarks during the ceremony and reading, J\u00f6rgensen called In the Country<\/em> a \u201cfresh and valuable work of fiction for an English reading audience, in part because it provides insights into the rarely written lives of first-generation Filipino immigrants.\u201d Alvar herself was born in the Philippines and raised in Bahrain, before moving to the United States to study and earn her undergraduate degree at Harvard University and an MFA from Columbia University.<\/p>\n

Remarking on the quality of Alvar\u2019s writing, J\u00f6rgensen noted, \u201cShe crafts a beautiful lucid prose that is what we might typically call \u2018poetic.\u2019 Her descriptions of characters and places are both rich and economical in their use of language.\u201d J\u00f6rgensen read aloud the following passage from the first story in the collection as an illustration:<\/p>\n

In the decade since I left she hadn\u2019t aged, exactly. To my eyes she seemed not older but more<\/em>. More frail; more tired; softer-spoken; her dark, teaspoon-shaped face cast farther down. Every feature I remembered had settled in her and been more deeply confirmed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Expressing her gratitude during the ceremony, Alvar said, \u201cI really see this book as the product of the efforts of so many of the amazing women in my life.\u201d She also admitted to \u201cfangirling over the list of women writers who received this prize before,\u201d which includes Toni Morrison for Song of Solomon<\/em>, Ann Tyler for Morgan\u2019s Passing<\/em>, Ursula K. Le Guin for Always Coming Home<\/em>, Ann Patchett for Taft<\/em>, and Nell Freudenberger for The Dissident<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Alvar read from the beginnings of three stories from the collection\u2014\u201cThe Kontrabida,\u201d \u201cLegends of the White Lady,\u201d and \u201cShadow Families\u201d\u2014before answering questions from the audience of students, faculty, staff, and community members. She offered her insights on writing, saying, \u201cI knew that I was going to be focusing on the diaspora and on immigrant and migrant lives. Knowing that kind of geographic connection freed me up to not really think about a theme. When my agent and editor were talking about order, I knew I wanted \u2018The Kontrabida\u2019 to be first and \u2018In the Country\u2019 (the title story and the longest) to be last.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the Country<\/em> was written over a span of about ten years, during which time Alvar grew as a writer. \u201cThere were a lot of moments from the earlier stories where I felt like I was still learning and not seeing solutions that are a little more obvious to me now. That\u2019s where having an editor helped. She was seeing everything at the same time and able to help me with the things that were written early in my development.\u201d Alvar highlighted the contributions of her agent and editor, both of whom \u201cshare many of the qualities that Janet Heininger Kafka possessed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The idea for the Kafka prize came out of the personal grief of the friends and family of Heininger Kafka, a young editor killed in an automobile accident just as her career was beginning to achieve its promise of excellence. She was 30 years old, and those who knew her believed she would do much to further the causes of literature and women. Her family, friends, and professional associates in the publishing industry created the endowment from which the prize is bestowed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been an incredible honor for me to accept this prize from the institute, as someone who minored in women\u2019s studies as an undergraduate and who, from the time that I first started writing fiction, was drawn to depicting the lives of mothers, daughters, and sisters,\u201d said Alvar.<\/p>\n

*Correction, November 1, 2016: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that <\/em>In the Country was the first short story collection to receive the Kafka Prize. In fact, <\/em>The Instinct for Bliss, a collection of short stories by Melissa Pritchard, won the prize for a book published in 1995.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the 40th anniversary of its inception, the Janet Heininger Kafka Prize recognized a short story collection: Mia Alvar\u2019s In the Country.<\/em> The University awards the annual prize to a promising but less established American woman writer of fiction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":372,"featured_media":194752,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13092],"tags":[486,20542,33692,16072,32922],"class_list":["post-194672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-arts","tag-awards","tag-department-of-english","tag-janet-heidinger-kafka-prize","tag-school-of-arts-and-sciences","tag-susan-b-anthony-institute-for-gender-sexuality-and-womens-studies"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAuthor Mia Alvar receives 2016 Kafka Prize<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/author-mia-alvar-receives-2016-kafka-prize-194672\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Author Mia Alvar receives 2016 Kafka Prize\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"On the 40th anniversary of its inception, the Janet Heininger Kafka Prize recognized a short story collection: Mia Alvar\u2019s In the Country. 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