News and Events
Features
Fiction MFA Student Donald Ray Pollock Named 2008 PEN/Robert Bingham Fellow
Pollock was selected as the recipient of the 2008 The PEN/Robert Bingham Fellowship for Writers based on his short story collection
Knockemstiff. The other finalists for the fellowship were Rivka Galchen for
Atmospheric Disturbances and Aravind Adiga for
The White Tiger.
The PEN/Robert Bingham Fellowship for Writers honors an exceptionally talented fiction writer whose debut work--a first novel or collection of short stories -- represents a distinguished literary achievement and suggests great promise. The winner receives a cash award of $35,000, a stipend intended to permit a significant degree of leisure in which to pursue a second work of literary fiction.
Pollock, who will graduate from OSU's
Creative Writing MFA program this Spring, grew up in Knockemstiff, Ohio. He dropped out of high school to work in a meatpacking plant and then spent over thirty years employed in a paper mill in southern Ohio. His stories have appeared in the Berkeley Fiction Review, the Journal, Third Coast, Chiron Review, Sou'wester, Boulevard, and Folio, and he has contributed essays on politics to the op-ed page of the New York Times.
Congratulations Don! In a little piece of OSU Creative Writing Program trivia, MFA-alum Christopher Coake won also won a PEN/Robert Bingham Fellowship in 2005 with the publication of his short story collection
We're In Trouble.
