NEWS

Congratulations to Julie Lekstrom Himes, whose novel MIKHAIL AND MARGARITA has won the 2017 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize.

Read the full announcement here.

Indeed, “Survivor Café — which combines moving personal narrative with illuminating research into the impact of mass trauma on a personal and cultural scale — feels like the book Rosner was born to write. Each page is imbued with urgency, with sincerity, with heartache, with heart. 

Read more here.

This is a subject internationally acclaimed poet and novelist Rosner (Electric City, 2014) has been contemplating her whole life. The daughter of two Holocaust survivors, Rosner was often the unwitting recipient of her parents’ experiences, though many questions went unasked, and many stories were left untold. Rosner’s three trips to Germany with her father left her wondering how memories of the Holocaust will be preserved and honored as the ranks of survivors continue to dwindle. Who will be entrusted to bear witness? No matter the atrocity—the Killing Fields, Hiroshima, Rwanda—the wounds humanity inflicts upon itself are writ large as survivors and their descendants cope with trauma, and genocides reshape history. Whether suffering is a result of an epic tragedy or individual grief, the act of keeping memory alive is a tricky balance of immediate comfort and continual pain. Rosner demonstrates a rare blend of scholarly assessment and personal revelation, tempering her singular passion with an encompassing mercy. In this important and vital contribution to the conversation about legacy and responsibility, Rosner distills the magnitude of such burdens and defines the scope of memorialization with an elegance and eloquence that reverberates with both depth and nuance.

Julie Lekstrom Himes’ MIKHAIL AND MARGARITA has been shortlisted for the 2017 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. The the prize will be awarded on December 5th.

Read the full announcement here.