Promoting words with deeds ...

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Eager to foster literary community service, independent publisher Dzanc Books has awarded its inaugural prize for community service to an Emerson College graduate student for her proposal to teach creative writing in Boston area prisons.

Laura van den Berg, editor of the Massachusett college’s literary and arts journal, the Redivider, will receive half the $5,000 prize in January, when she begins her community service project, and the remainder when it is completed.

Van den Berg, 24, who is at work on a short-story collection tentatively titled ‘What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us,’ was among 160 applicants. Her ‘commitment to working with prisoners and helping Dzanc put together a written anthology from these workshops, coupled with her remarkable writing, moved her consistently and undeniably to the front of the list,’ author Steven Gillis, co-founder of the Michigan-based nonprofit publishing house, said in announcing the prize.

Van den Berg, a native of central Florida, said in a statement that she was ‘astonished and deeply honored’ to have been selected, and called Gillis and Dzanc editors Dan Wickett and Keith Taylor ‘wonderful champions of literary fiction .... It’s a huge gift to have the opportunity to work with them.’

Dzanc Books, started by Gillis and Wickett in 2006 to champion writers whose work doesn’t fit the marketing categories of for-profit presses, launched their annual competition earlier this year to encourage working writers who are also interested in bettering their communities. Dzanc also helps to develop school educational programs, workshops and writers-in-residence programs.

Kristina Lindgren