The 2006
Amanda Davis
Highwire Fiction
Award.
By Anthony Schneider
- - - -
The Kudos
Congratulations, Hannah Pittard, winner of the 2006 Amanda Davis Highwire Fiction Award. We first encountered Hannah when she entered the inaugural Highwire competition a couple years ago; she was a finalist, and a story of hers was included in McSweeney's Issue 16. She came back stronger than ever, and we're thrilled to now honor her talent and ambition, among a field of worthy applicants. Do prize awarders say "So many submissions were really good" too often? Well, so many submissions were really good.
The Whinging Kvetch
Writers are complainers. You sit in your solitary chair, writing, or trying to write, and you think about the trouble with America, the poverty of words, the injustice of shoes that don't fit properly. Amanda's mainstay kvetches focused on writing too little and sleeping too much, with freestyle excursions into ugly bags, the president, sinus headaches, and things she shouldn't have said.
The Drop of Sweetness
You sit in your chair and marvel at the beauty of dusk. You feel gratitude for one good sentence. You take solace in a poem, a song. Amanda knew when to pat herself on the back for figuring out a knot in a story, or for rounding a corner in her novel. She felt gratitude for having time to write and good books to read. She reveled in the crunch of snow and the smell of coffee.
The Good Thing
This prize is a good thing. For those of us who loved and lost Amanda, it is one small vessel for that love and loss. It is a good thing to put shape to sadness. For the many people who submitted very good stories and the many more who will do so in the future, I hope it is some kind of beacon. For Hannah Pittard, whose intimate, propulsive writing we hereby officially if somewhat meanderingly applaud, I hope it is an island of sweetness in a sea of kvetch.
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