Hudson Prize Winner and Finalists Announced

PAt BW 001Congratulations to Patrick Michael Finn
Black Lawrence Press is pleased to announce the winner and finalists of the 2009 Hudson Prize. Congratulations to Patrick Michael Finn whose short story collection From the Darkness Right Under Our Feet is this year’s winner. The collection will be available from Black Lawrence Press in 2011. Congratulations also to the finalists and semi-finalists who are listed on the Black Lawrence Press website.
Each year Black Lawrence Press awards The Hudson Prize for an unpublished collection of poems or short stories. Hudson Prize winning manuscripts are published by the press and their authors are awarded cash prizes of $1,000.
Patrick Michael Finn was born in Joliet, Illinois and was raised there and in rural Southern California. He completed his B.A at the University of California, Riverside and his M.F.A. at the University of Arizona, where he was a Dean’s Teaching Fellow. His first book, the novella A Martyr for Suzy Kosasovich, was selected as winner of the 2006 Ruthanne Wiley Memorial Novella Competition and published by The Cleveland State University Poetry Center. A winner of the AWP Intro Award, selected by Benjamin Alíre Sáenz, and the 2004 Third Coast Fiction Prize, judged by Stuart Dybek, Finn’s stories have appeared in Ploughshares, TriQuarterly, Third Coast, Quarterly West, The Clackamas Literary Review, Punk Planet, and Houghton Mifflin’s The Best American Mystery Stories 2004. His fiction has also received citations in the 2005 Pushcart Prize and The Best American Short Stories 2008. He has taught writing at the University of Arizona, Western Nebraska Community College, and the University of North Carolina, Asheville, where he was awarded the 2006 Teaching Excellence Award. In 2007 he founded and currently coordinates the creative writing program at Chandler-Gilbert Community College. He lives in Arizona with his wife, poet Valerie Bandura, and their son James.