The 1993 Lannan Literary Awards

The Lannan Foundation made 10 writers very happy this week with the announcement of their 1993 Literary Awards. In this, the fifth year of the awards program, grants were increased from $40,000 to $50,000 each. “There’s a diversity of backgrounds and a range of writing styles in this year’s group that I’m really proud of,” said Jeanie Kim, director of Lannan’s literary program. “We’re not simply rewarding the same kinds of writing. I’m particularly pleased about Denise Levertov--she’s been neglected for too long because she was so outspoken on the Vietnam War; and William Gaddis, so many writers have learned from him, but readers have been intimidated by unfavorable reviews. Now he’s finally back in print.” We asked some of the award winners, in a polite sort of roundabout way, what they were planning to do with the money. “I’m going to stay home,” said Terry Tempest Williams, a little breathlessly. “I’m going to stay home and think about the issues that burn in my heart--about landscape. I’m going to see what comes out of quietness. Benjamin Alire Saenz, who won one of the poetry fellowships told us that he also plans to stay home, in El Paso, where he is working on a collection of poems on the border, and a collection of essays on the border. He will travel back and forth to Stanford’s Hoover Library to cull poems from the newspaper “The Daily Worker” for a collected volume that he hopes will help in the revival of working class literature in America. “Money,” he told us over the phone, “I’ve been so worried about it, and it saps so much energy. Now I can just write.” “And what are you going to do with the money?” we asked Denis Johnson, author, most recently, of “Jesus’ Son.” “I’m the kind of person that would blow it in a night,” he told us, not at all breathlessly. “But I won’t. I’m going to finish the last half of a long novel, and get well into a second one before I’m broke again. I was just taking stock in the week they called me with the news. I’d eaten up my advance for the novel, and I was thinking: I promise, if I ever wrap my hands around another dollar I’ll be good.”