It’s raining National Book Award nominations here in the Blue Ridge!

Hollins Creative Writing alumna, photographer and wordsmith Sally Mann ’75, is up for the honor for her resplendent, image-laden memoir Hold Still.

Says The New York Times: “Hold Still’ is a cerebral and discursive book about the South and about family and about making art that has some of the probity of Flannery O’Connor’s nonfiction collection “Mystery and Manners” yet is spiked with the wildness and plain talk of Mary Karr’s best work. Like the young Ms. Karr, Ms. Mann was a scrappy, troublemaking tomboy, one who grew into a scrappy, troublemaking, impossible-to-ignore young woman and artist.”

Karen E. Bender, Distinguished Visiting Professor in Creative Writing, is up for a National Book Award in Fiction in honor of her emotionally complex and class conscious collection of short stories, Refund.

“Money is ostensibly the fuel that powers Karen E. Bender’s new collection “Refund”…but Bender’s subtler preoccupation is the eroding effect of emotional want…Bender understands worlds about marriage and emotional need.” — New York Times 

 

You can follow both these incredible creative women online at @Sallythemann and @Karen_E_Bender