Hello writers, milestone reachers, award winners, and award aspirers!
This week’s guest, Jayne Anne Phillips, is a Pulitzer prize-winning author for her latest book, Night Watch, which gives Write-minded an opportunity to muse about awards—why they matter, what we make of them and do with them, and where we might find awards from things we seek out in addition to those we receive. Join us for this wide-ranging literary conversation about storytelling, language, flash fiction, reading, and, of course, awards.
Pulitzer prize winning books of 2024:
Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips
Primary Trust by Eboni Booth
No Right to an Honest Living by Jacqueline Jones
King by Jonathan Eig
Master Slave Husband Wife by Ilyon Woo
Liliana’s Invincible Summer by Cristina Rivera Garza
Tripas by Brandon Som
A Day in the Life of Abed Salama by Nathan Thrall
Partial transcript from the show
Grant: I’m Grant Faulkner, an everyday writer who is largely undecorated, and I’m here with my award-winning co-host, Brooke Warner, and, Brooke, the reason that I’m fixating on awards is that today we have on our second Pulitzer-prize winning author in just a month. We did an episode with Viet Thanh Nguyen, who won the Pulitzer for The Sympathizer, and now we have on Jayne Anne Phllips, who just won for her amazing novel, Night Watch. I pay attention to awards, but at the same time, I’ve actually always had mixed feelings about awards, especially when it comes to art, because I don’t know how to really tell why one great novel might be greater than another great novel, and I don’t like to think of them like that, in competition with one another, but awards are great to increase the visibility of books in general and the individual books that win awards, and they create conversations, especially when it comes to the larger awards, like the Oscars. And God knows authors need a little celebration, especially those like Jayne Anne, who has produced one masterful work after another for decades. I’m very happy for her. And I’m very happy for you, Brooke, because you were just awarded the Publishing Professionals Network’s 2024 Distinguished Service Award. Tell us a bit about that award and what it means for you.
Brooke: Aw, thanks for that, and for asking. It’s a big honor to be sure. I think the biggest moment is when you get that call or that email—in my case it was an email. I felt very honored because anyone in this space, whether you’re an author or a publishing professional, you’re toiling away and it’s a pretty undercelebrated role you play. So awards are validation, and it does go a long way, actually. My distinguished service award is not the Pulitzer, but it turns out that I was nominated and I had to be approved by a committee of peers, so I was voted in and that was really meaningful to me. So yes, just validation.
Grant: Validation is a good word for it, especially when it comes to a service award, because service can go unnoticed, and it can be taken for granted, so I’m very happy for you, and I know this award was well deserved. You know, when it comes to actors winning an Oscar or a musician winning a Grammy or an author winning a Pulitzer, I think we often think, that’s it, they’ve reached the pinnacle of their field, they have to be immensely happy, but I think it’s worth keeping in mind that there is something bigger than an award, and that’s the art that’s calling you every day. I think often of Robin Williams, who said after he won the Oscar that the happiness of winning was intense for a day or two, and then it diminished day by day until a week later, when things were back to normal, people were calling out, “Hey, Mork!” on the street and that was that. I’m sure he kept some kind of glow of winning for longer than that, but I think his point is a good one: the reward is largely about the art, and we’re fundamentally humans in the end, not Pulitzer or Oscars winners, and we have to deal with the dailiness of our lives. And I think that since most of us don’t win awards, it’s good to remember other milestones that are perhaps a different type of award. Because the milestones we reach change us as authors, and it’s good to remember how we’re climbing a ladder, even if we’re climbing it slowly, and even it it doesn’t feel dramatic or worth noting. For example, Brooke, I did a reading the other day in Davis. I had to drive a couple of hours, rush through dinner, and I was dressed for Berkeley fog, not Davis heat. When I arrived at the reading, everyone was in shorts and t-shirts and sweating. I was sweating twice as much. Now when I did that same reading 9 years earlier, I remember being super nervous and planning everything out and practicing and having performance anxiety, and this time, I didn’t know what the format was going to be, and I just showed up and had to wing it, sweaty and hot, and I didn’t care. I had no anxiety. I’ve done so many readings and public performances that I’m rarely affected by performance anxiety now, and it all went great—largely because I was in the “wing it” mode, and I’m comfortable with that. So that’s a type of award for me because I spent the majority of my writing life strenuously avoiding readings because I was too nervous to read my work in public, and now I have fun at them, look forward to them, and can show up sweating and tired and still put on a decent show—or I think I did. Are there any other important milestones in your writing and publishing life that you consider pivotal turning points, award-worthy? I’m thinking of your TEDx Talk, or maybe just your first published book?
Brooke: Good question, Grant. I guess when I think of awards there are two types—there’s the type when you are completely surprised because you just receive notice that you’ve gotten an award. I’ve had a few of these. I was awarded the BISG Innovator Award in 2017, and then She Writes Press received the Indie Publisher of the Year Award in 2019, and then this Distinguished Service Award from this year goes in that same category. Then there are the things that you apply for, and they may be very competitive so even still there’s a winning involved. And for me these things have been just as satisfying because I’ve really wanted them, so the getting of them has felt equally validating. In this camp falls the TEDx Talk, for sure. Recently, though, I’ve had a few “wins” that I very much asked for. Interviewing Naomi Klein onstage at the Bay Area Book Festival was something I wanted and asked for, but I did have to be “approved,” and I knew that I wouldn’t be if I hadn’t earned it, and if my team didn’t think I’d do a good job. And then I applied to the San Miguel de Allende Writers conference. I’ve been before, but it’s probably the most competitive writers conference in the world at this point, no exaggeration there. I’ve been applying for five years. And when I got notice this year that I was getting invited back I actually felt like it was a bigger win than some of those awards. So just interesting to put it all in perspective and say it out loud. How about you, Grant, what have some of these milestones that are awards or feel like awards been like for you?
Grant: Yeah, any first of publishing feels like an award to me. My first publication was the lit mag in my MFA program. And then it was big for me to get a story published in a lit mag other than my MFA program, the literary journal Gargoyle. Getting an essay in the New York Times was a super big deal, and then publishing my first book, Fissures, was a huge milestone. I was nearly 50 when that came out, just so listeners know, it was a long time coming. And then every book is a like an award to me, because like you said about applying for something, getting a book published is like applying at a bunch of publishers, and not only do you want to be accepted, you want to find acceptance at the publisher of your choice. I can definitely also list things like being Executive Director of NaNoWriMo and starting this podcast with you and starting my literary journal, 100 Word Story. These were all moments when I leveled up, so they feel like awards to me. I like to think that happens in a lot of different ways for every writer, which is why, perhaps instead of focusing on resolutions at year’s end, maybe it’s better just to make a list of milestones to measure your progress with—to give yourself an award or two—because progress isn’t just about publications or awards. But since awards are often really good for book sales and promotion, I’m curious if you have any tips for people on how to be considered for awards, especially for indie authors. I know I’ve had books entered into competitions by my publicist at a publisher, and then I’ve also had to do my own research to find award opportunities, and then I asked my publisher to submit on my behalf, and sometimes that entailed the publisher paying an entry fee. What’s your take on awards and the author’s role and how authors can make sure their books are considered for the right awards?
Brooke: This is a good and big question. She Writes Press authors seem to be very tuned into awards, and I love that. Our authors apply to a lot of them, and we are a very decorated press as a result. I think we tend to do better because we are a big community of authors, and the authors talk and connect with one another and they track the deadlines, which is half the battle in my opinion. Some authors are also just so keyed into awards. I notice those authors who know the schedules, who are on top of the submitting dates. Authors who just rely on their publicists or publishers to do it for them may lose important opportunities. It’s pretty easy to find lists of awards. Writers Digest and Poets & Writers list the ones that are coming up. I think it’s great to win awards for bragging rights, for adding to your resume, and just generally to have an excuse to post on social media. And I think authors can and should be as proactive as they can be about it and not rely on others to get it done for you.
Grant: Great advice, and I’ll echo that it’s good to drive this as an author because sometimes publishers either aren’t attuned to certain awards or they just don’t have the bandwidth to submit, so it’s good to work this into your publicity plan. We’re going to talk with Jayne Anne Phillips about her Pulitzer, her novel Night Watch, and some interesting things about her creative process after this short break.
This Week’s Book Trend:
This week's #booktrend is a fascinating story in the Times this month that’s less trend but more something worth exploring. The story is about Jill Ciment and how she’s written a new memoir to, according to the Times, “investigate the flaws and factual lapses in her earlier work.” In doing an autopsy on her original work, Ciment questions the artifice inherent in memoir as a literary form. My opinion is what matters in memoir is emotional truth. It’s complicated that Ciment wrote a book with flaws and factual errors, for sure, as it’s the memoirist’s responsibility to write the truth they know. Most memoirists can’t remember all the things that happened in their story, so they have to sometimes fill in what “could have been” or “might have been.” What are your thoughts?
For further reading, check out Brooke’s recent post on this story!
ABOUT JAYNE ANNE PHILLIPS
Jayne Anne Phillips is the author of Black Tickets, Machine Dreams, Fast Lanes, Shelter, MotherKind, Lark and Termite, Quiet Dell, and, most recently, Night Watch, which just recently won the Pulitzer Prize. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Bunting Fellowship, and two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships. She’s also been a National Book Award finalist, and was twice a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She lives in New York and Boston.
I loved your interview with Jayne Anne Phillips, especially when she talked about reading and the importance of finding writers whose work deeply resonates.