Atwood Awarded Trib Prize
by Caryn Thurman on Thursday, August 11, 2005 06:50 pm
Margaret Atwood was recently named as the 2005 recipient of the Chicago Tribune Literary Prize, awarded for lifetime achievement. The honor will be officially bestowed during the Chicago Humanities Festival this fall. That gives her plenty of time to rest up for the big event, lest she pull a repeat performance of this little number, seen at the PEN Festival in April.
3 reponses to "Atwood Awarded Trib Prize"
Ha ...That is hilarious. Falling asleep at the PEN festival is a nice addition to her lifetime achievement, as far as I'm concerned.
Literary AwardsLiterary awards are a mystery to me. Booksense awarded me something (I can't remember what) which made no sense at all. The culture even turns poetry into a competition. Writer versus writer? How absurd is that. PEN gave me an award for Books Beyonds the Margins which had nothing to do with Ballantine's profit margin whatsoever.In fact, the day before PEN gave me the award, Random House fired my ass -- as in take your work and shove it -- which was funny because the next day (post award) they had to come crawling back and ask me to appear in New York which was something I was not inclined to do seeing as how I had been abused by everyone but PEN.I composed my PEN speech as: THEY SAID which was a long and boring (boring enough to put one to sleep) laundry list of every lie I had ever been told from the mouths of editors and publishers. Such a list must always begin with: "THEY SAID" WE WANT EVERYTHING YOU WRITE.Right.I don't GET awards or how one thing is better than another or "best."I know this. Publishing gives itself awards every day of the week. There is no other institution in American culture that awards itself as many awards as publishing.Name me ONE fundraiser publishing has ever produced for AIDS research.Name me ONE DIME publishing has raised for AIDS.You can't. There hasn't been one red cent raised to fight AIDS by publishing which has been hit as hard as any other institution, perhaps harder by this disease.The Teamsters have raised more money to fight AIDS than publishing.All sorts of institutions and businesses have contributed.Nothing from publishing and publishers.They do not deserve an award for generosity.There is no cultural institution that exemplifies sheer greed in quite the way publishing symbolizes that particular trait.Publishing needs to stop patting itself of the back and wake up.People in publishing scream they make no money. And I am Marie of Romania. -- Nasdijj
Hi Nasdijj --I think that's a pretty fair summary -- I agree. Seems like most awards are more about the publishing industry than recognizing and promoting writers or causes. Would love to hear more about your experiences with this.