2006 Bellwether Prize winner announced
NEW YORK—Barbara Kingsolver is pleased to announce the 2006 winner of the Bellwether Prize for Fiction. Hillary Jordan of Tivoli, New York, will receive the $25,000 award for her unpublished novel, Mudbound, as well as an opportunity to have the novel published by Scribner.
Jordan’s novel was selected by a panel of judges in the blind competition from a national pool of entries in the Bellwether’s unique effort to support literature of social responsibility. Jordan was born in Dallas, Texas, and spent her childhood there and in Muskogee, Okla. After receiving her bachelor of arts degree from Wellesley College, she embarked on a career as an advertising copywriter. Twelve years and hundreds of commercials later, “I came to my senses and started writing fiction,” she said. In May 2004 she received her MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University. Her short stories have appeared in StoryQuarterly, Carolina Quarterly and Chautauqua Literary Journal, among others. She has been awarded fellowships from Columbia, the American Association of University Women, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the La Napoule Foundation and Fundácion Valparaiso. Mudbound is her first novel.
“I'm deeply honored by the faith Ms. Kingsolver has placed in me and in Mudbound,” Jordan said. “I do believe literature can change the world for the better, and I can only hope Mudbound will have a small measure of that power.”
