Lescroart Shares the Wealth

Sacramento’s Daily Democrat reports that the graduate writing program at U.C. Davis “will help launch the next generation of fiction writers thanks to a $50,000 gift from New York Times best-selling novelist John Lescroart.”

Half of this money will be disbursed in $5000 increments, awarded annually for the next five years to the author of the best “substantial work of fiction” (novel, novella, or short story collection) submitted by UCD Creative Writing Program students or alums who have not yet published a book. The award, named the Maurice Prize to honor Lescroart’s father, will be judged this year by Karen Joy Fowler, author of  The Jane Austen Book Club.

Program director Pam Houston commented that “literary merit will be the over-riding criterion in selecting the winning entry,” adding, “this prize will recognize and emphasize storytelling ability in any and all genres.”

Which is all really neat, and I applaud Lescroart’s generosity whole-heartedly, but I still kind of wish the prize could be earmarked for genre works specifically.

This is because I am bitter, and because I am so very annoyed with Literary Fiction.

In MY imaginary totalitarian republic, Lescroart would be up for Frank Conroy’s Iowa spot, those MFA kids at Stanford and Columbia would have visiting professors each year from the International Thriller Writers, and there’d be someone really cool as The Jim Thompson Chair at Sarah Lawrence… Laura Lippmann, maybe, or Alan Furst, or S.J. Rozan, or Domenic Stansberry.

Of course, in my imaginary totalitarian republic, Ken Bruen is already the odds-on favorite for Pope, and Lee Child runs the World Bank.

You may say that I’m a dreamer….