An unnerving story of grief and high-school sex has won
the world’s most valuable short story prize. The American author Junot Díaz was
presented with a cheque for £30,000 by novelist and prize judge Joanna Trollope
at a ceremony tonight at the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival for ‘Miss
Lora’, a tale set in 1980s New Jersey. Andrew O’Hagan, novelist and prize
judge, said that the story ‘has the feel of a contemporary classic’ and that it
‘echoes in the heart as well as the mind.’
Junot Díaz (above) – a 2012 recipient of the MacArthur
Fellowship, or ‘Genius Grant’ – becomes the fourth winner of the Sunday Times
EFG Private Bank Short Story Award. He saw off competition from a shortlist
that included Booker shortlistees Sarah Hall and Ali Smith, and Mark Haddon,
author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. They – and fellow
shortlisted authors Toby Litt and Cynan Jones – each received £1,000. Junot
Díaz joins a winners’ circle of Kevin Barry, who won the Award last year with
his story ‘Beer Trip to Llandudno’, American Anthony Doerr, who won in 2011 for
his story ‘The Deep’, and New Zealander C K Stead, who won the inaugural Award
in 2010 with ‘Last Season’s Man’.
Junot Díaz on ‘Miss Lora’
‘So many of the young men I grew up with had, during
their adolescences, these difficult-to-categorize sexual relationships with
older women. What's unnerving is that because we think of adolescent boys –
especially teenagers of colour – as already hypersexualized, we tend not to
consider these kinds of relationships as criminal and abusive as we do similar
relationships that involve teenage girls.
I wanted to jump right into the middle of the awful ambivalence. And I also wanted to do justice to that mid-1980s
atmosphere of apocalyptic dread that I grew up in. So many of my students and
younger nephews have no idea how fearsomely apocalyptic that period was, how
the shadow of nuclear annihilation was over all of us. I guess this is one of those sex and the
apocalypse stories, my very own, New Jersey, Mon Amour.’
Andrew O’Hagan:
‘Written in the energetic, high-toned Spanglish that is
characteristic of his early short stories, the story caught the judges’
attention with its precise, unflinching prose, and with its brilliant evocation
of an immigrant world struggling with modernity. Diaz is a short story writer
who gives everything its due – no words are wasted and his characters harbour
both a sense of dignity and a wealth of surprise. “I, as a writer, find myself
trying as best as I can,” Diaz once said, “to describe not only the
micro-culture that I grew up in, but some of what that leads to.” In ‘Miss
Lora’ he offers a vivid world of light and darkness; it is a work that echoes
in the heart as well as the mind.’
The 2013 judges are award-winning novelists Andrew
O’Hagan, Lionel Shriver, Joanna Trollope and Sarah Waters. Completing the
line-up are Andrew Holgate, Literary Editor of The Sunday Times, and Lord
Matthew Evans, Chairman of EFG Private Bank (non-voting Chair of Judges).
Junot Díaz is the author of Drown (1997) and The Brief
Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007), which won the National Book Critics Circle
Award and the Pulitzer Prize in 2008. His most recent publication (in which
‘Miss Lora’ appears) is This Is How You Lose Her (2012), a collection of linked
narratives about love told through the lives of New Jersey Dominicans, as they
struggle to find a point where their two worlds meet. He is the recipient of a
PEN/Malamud Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Born in Santo Domingo,
Díaz is also a professor at MIT.
Readers savoured all six shortlisted stories at two
special events at Foyles, Charing Cross Road on March 20 and 21 – produced in
conjunction with WordTheatre. These featured readings by a stellar line-up of
acting talent including Helen McCrory, Jonathan Pryce and Olivia Williams.
All six shortlisted stories are available in a specially
produced ebook, Six Shorts, available at www.amazon.co.uk
Andrew Holgate commented:
‘If the test of an outstanding short story is that it
deepens with every reading, then Junot Díaz 's ‘Miss Lora’ passes that test
with flying colours. It is a rich, precise and challenging story whose
emotional pull becomes more and more apparent with each revisit. Díaz is one of
the most exciting voices in the language, and a wonderful addition to an
already distinguished list of international winners. The prize goes from
strength to strength, the Sunday Times' commitment to it and passion for the
short story in general remains very strong, and we are looking forward already
to what the 2014 prize will bring.’
For full details of the Award visit: www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/shortstoryaward
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