2014 Townsend Prize finalists named

The Georgia Center for the Book and The Chattahoochee Review, the literary journal of Georgia Perimeter College, will announce the winner of the 2014 Townsend Prize for Fiction in a ceremony at the Atlanta Botanical Garden on Thursday, April 24. Named for Jim Townsend, founder of Atlanta magazine and mentor to some of Georgia's most distinguished authors, the Townsend Prize is presented biennially to a Georgia writer judged to have published an outstanding work of fiction during the preceding two years.

2014's finalists reflect the prize's celebration of the diverse nature of today's Southern writing:

Stacia Brown, Accidents of Providence (2012)

Brown lives, works and writes in Atlanta; Accidents of Providence is her first novel.

Amber Dermont, The Starboard Sea (2012)
Dermont is an associate professor of English and creative writing at Agnes Scott College in Decatur; she is also the author of the story collection Damage Control.

Joshilyn Jackson, Someone Else's Love Story (2013)
Jackson is the author of six bestselling novels, including Gods in Alabama and A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty. She lives in Decatur with her husband and their two children.

Sheri Joseph, Where You Can Find Me (2013)
Joseph is the author of Stray and Bear Me Safely Over. She lives in Atlanta and teaches creative writing at Georgia State University, where she is fiction editor of the literary journal Five Points.

Charles McNair, Pickett's Charge (2013)
McNair's first novel, Land O' Goshen, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1994. He lives in Atlanta and writes full time.

Jamie Quatro, I Want to Show You More: Stories (2013)
Quatro is a contributing editor at Oxford American magazine. She lives with her family in Lookout Mountain, Georgia.

Josh Russell, A True History of the Captivation, Transport to Strange Lands, and Deliverance of Hannah Guttentag (2012)
Russell is the author of the novels Yellow Jack and My Bright Midnight. He is a professor of English at Georgia State University and lives in Decatur with his wife and daughter.

Susan Rebecca White, A Place at the Table (2013)
White is the author of the novels Bound South and A Soft Place to Land. An Atlanta native, she teaches creative writing at Emory University.

Philip Lee Williams, Emerson's Brother (2012)
Williams is a member of the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame and has published over a dozen books of fiction, nonfiction and poetry. He lives with his family in Oconee County, Georgia.

Anthony Winkler, God Carlos (2012)
Winkler has published more than eight works, including the novel The Painted Canoe and a biography, Trust the Darkness: My Life as a Writer. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with his wife, Cathy.


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