2019 Neukom Institute Literary Arts Awards
Dartmouth's Neukom Institute announced the winners of the 2019 Neukom Institute Literary Arts Awards for speculative fiction and playwriting on June 4.
2019 Neukom Institute Literary Arts Award for Speculative Fiction (Debut Category)
Peng Shepherd, The Book of M (William Morrow, 2018)
2019 Neukom Institute Literary Arts Award for Speculative Fiction (Open Category)
Audrey Schulman, Theory of Bastards (Europa Editions, 2018)
2019 Neukom Institute Literary Arts Award for Playwriting
Francisco Mendoza, Machine Learning
The book awards were judged by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer. The play award was judged by a panel of experts from Northern Stage, VoxFest, Dartmouth's Department of Film and Media Studies, Dartmouth's Department of Theater and The Civilians theater company.
Each award winner will receive a $5,000 honorarium that will be presented during a Dartmouth-hosted panel to discuss the genre and their work.
Ann VanderMeer said about Peng Shepherd's debut novel The Book of M:
It's an outstanding first novel. Very ambitious, highly imaginative, and hits all the right emotional beats. Parts of it took my breath away.
And she said of the open book category winner, Audrey Schulman's Theory of Bastards:
Beautifully written, provocative and yet highly satisfying, this novel took lots of risks. And it paid off in this remarkable story. Unlike many dystopian novels, this one gives you hope for humanity and the future without being sentimental.
The 2019 Neukom award winner for playwriting is Francisco Mendoza, whose play, "Machine Learning," draws on insights from the immigrant experience and the human relationship with technology to detail how a computer scientist's intelligent nursing app both repairs and complicates his troubled relationship with his father.
Mendoza will receive assistance with the play's development in the form of a reading with VoxFest at Dartmouth College in July, and a staged reading at Northern Stage in White River Junction, Vermont, during the 2019/2020 season.
The Neukom Institute for Computational Science is dedicated to supporting and inspiring computational work. The Literary Arts Awards is part of the Neukom Institute's initiative to explore the ways in which computational ideas impact society. The Neukom Institute Literary Arts Awards were established in 2017. The awards aspire to raise general awareness of the speculative fiction genre, as well as the interconnectivity between the sciences and the arts.
This entry was posted in Awards and tagged Ann VanderMeer, Audrey Schulman, Jeff VanderMeer, Neukom Institute Literary Arts Award for Debut Speculative Fiction, Neukom Institute Literary Arts Award for Speculative Fiction, Peng Shepherd by Mike Glyer. Bookmark the permalink.