Meet Daniel Mason, 2020 Joyce Carol Oates Prize Winner
Dear Friends of The Simpson Literary Project,
During these tumultuous times, people are finding themselves turning to storytellers to find meaning and respite. In that spirit, we are delighted to share some of our fabulous Simpson Literary Project writers with you. Our 2020 Joyce Carol Oates Prize Winner, Daniel Mason, is here, live from Zoom. Please take a look and a listen. You will be inspired and invigorated.
Warmly,
Diane
Executive Director
simpsonliteraryproject.org/
Meet the 2020 JCO Prize Winner, Daniel Mason, whose most recent book is A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth
Here, once again, is T. Geronimo Johnson, 2017 JCO Prize Winner, author of Welcome to Braggsville.
As I work to remove my many blinders, those I wear as a parent, a writer, a member of the human community, I endeavor to ask questions without easy answers, of myself and in my work. This does not always make for popular fiction. The Simpson/JCO Prize is a welcome laurel, an imprimatur. The financial prize supports intellectual inquiry, creative freedom, interrogation of spirit, lots of diapers. Most importantly, it buys time, without which my new novel could not have been written.
T. Geronimo Johnson, 2017 Joyce Carol Oates Prize Recipient, is the celebrated author of Welcome to Braggsville. He splits his time between Rome and Berkeley.
Along with Anne Raeff, 2019 JCO Prize Shortlist, author most recently of Only the River
Two years ago, tired of being in a perpetual state of anger about the state of the world and the United States especially, my wife, Lori, and I decided that we needed a different approach to life. We needed to do something we had never done before, something that would give us purpose and from which we could learn in a new, not an intellectual, way.