By Michael Grossberg
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
The 2010 Thurber Prize for American Humor was awarded last night to Steve Hely for his satirical work about celebrity culture.
Hely, a TV comedy writer for the NBC series The Office, won for his debut novel, How I Became a Famous Novelist (Black Cat/Grove Press).
The award, presented by the Thurber House last night at the Algonquin Hotel in New York, includes a $5,000 prize.
"I wish I had a talent for drawing like Thurber," said Hely, 31. "I only got the humor part."
How I Became a Famous Novelist, a literary satire about a slacker who sets out to write a best-selling novel, has been praised for its send-up of literary pretensions. The novel includes parodies of genres, best-selling lists and the writing process.
Hely, a Boston native and graduate of Harvard University, has also written for 30 Rock, Th e Late Show With David Letterman and the animated comedy American Dad.
Sloane Crosley, a 2010 judge and a finalist for the 2009 prize, called Hely "a magnificent satirist, a real storyteller and a creator of a narrator who is both charmingly familiar and original."
The other judges were Laurie Notaro - also a 2009 finalist, for the collection The Idiot Girl and the Flaming Tantrum of Death: Reflections on Revenge, Germaphobia, and Laser Hair Removal - and writer-editor Bruce Tracy, a veteran of adult-trade publishing and a one-time editorial director at Doubleday and Random House.
The runners-up for the 2010 prize are Jancee Dunn and Rhoda Janzen, who in August were announced with Hely as finalists.
First presented in 1997 and an annual award since 2004, the Thurber Prize is given to the author and publisher of the outstanding book of humor writing published in the United States in the previous year.
The winner is obliged to appear within the next year at a literary event at the Thurber House, a Columbus literary center and a boyhood home of humorist James Thurber, many of whose stories first appeared in The New Yorker.
The 2009 Thurber Prize winner was Ian Frazier, for Lamentations of the Father.
No comments:
Post a Comment