The 2006 winner of the annual $15,000 Sherwood Anderson Writer’s Grant is Karen Fisher of Lopez Island, Washington, Michael M. Spear, co-president of the Sherwood Anderson Foundation has announced.
Fisher’s winning entry is titled, A Sudden Country, a novel she began in 1991 and one in which she taught herself to write with the encouragement of independent film producer Laurie Parker, she said. While going through numerous revisions over the years, she said she also worked with her husband, Dave, building houses to support their family, which includes three children.
The foundation felt that the novel was well worth waiting for, Spear said. It is the story of an 1847 journey made by an Iowa family on the Oregon Trail in a covered wagon with other families. “The book is vivid, complex and dramatic, and offers excellent period details and believable expressions of consciousness under different and often extreme circumstances,” Spear said. “These circumstances include smallpox, fear, repression, drunkenness, hostility and love.”
Fisher worked on the novel under a narrow margin of affluence, she said, adding that there were many ordinary jobs that supported and informed her writing. “The award was unexpected, and maybe even inexplicable, but it’s unbelievably welcome, “she said.
She is now working on her second novel, titled The Burning Tree. In it, she will take up the story of the American West in the years following the Civil War. Set in Idaho’s Nez Perce reservation, it is based on the true story of two middle-aged women sent west to enforce the government’s new policy of “Indian Allottment.” she said.
Fisher is the winner of the 2006 Virginia Commonwealth University First Novel Award and winner of the 2006 Mountains and Plains Booksellers Association Award. She is a 2006 finalist in the Pen/Faulkner Award and the 2006 Spur Award. Find out more about her and read excerpts of her writing at this site. asuddencountry.com
In making the award each year, the foundation is carrying on a tradition started by Anderson in the last century when he helped both William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway first get published, Spear said.