We are very pleased to welcome Adam Prince, the newest member of the Black Lawrence Press family. His short story collection The Beautiful Wishes of Ugly Men, a finalist for the St. Lawrence Book Award, will be published late next year.
A graduate of Vassar College and the University of Arkansas MFA program, Adam Prince is currently a Ph.D. candidate in English with a creative writing emphasis at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Up until 2010, Prince had stories published in various journals, including The Missouri Review, Black Warrior Review, and Mid-American Review, but this past year has marked a significant breakthrough. In 2010, Prince won first prize in the Winter Contest from Narrative Magazine, The Wabash Prize for Fiction from Sycamore Review, and also placed stories with The Southern Review, Monkeybicycle, and LIT. In May of 2010, he married the poet Charlotte Pence. Finally, at the year’s end, his first collection, The Beautiful Wishes of Ugly Men, was accepted by Black Lawrence Press.
The collection is about men attempting to reconcile their lustful, baroque imaginations with the realities of their actual lives. The work is ambitious but accessible, aiming toward the subtlety and cold shock of James Salter and the moment-by-moment entertainment of George Saunders. Selecting one of Prince’s works for The Wabash Prize, judge Peter Ho Davies described it as “notable for its acute observation, wry wit, and delicate characterization” resulting in “a quietly, almost furtively, heartbreaking story.”
You can read one of Adam Prince’s prize-winning stories here:
http://www.narrativemagazine.com/issues/spring-2010/roolette-roolette
You can also read an interview with the author here:
http://www.sycamorereview.com/2010/10/adam-prince-is-angry-and-determined/