Dana Spiotta, an associate professor of English who teaches in the master of fine arts in creative writing program at Syracuse University in New York, was named the winner of the St. Francis College Literary Prize. The prize honors authors who have published between three and five books of fiction. The award comes with a $50,000 prize.
Spiotta is the author of four novels including her latest work Innocents and Others (Scribner, 2016). It is a story of two women filmmakers in Los Angeles during the 1980s. Rene Steinke, a juror for the prize committee said that Spiotta’s latest work is “told through an ingenious arrangement of fragmented narratives and invented sources (biographical essays, video transcripts, diary entries, online chats). Spiotta’s novel features a cast of characters whose flaws are as fascinating and poignant as their ambitions. On the surface, this is a story about a friendship, but it’s also a really bold examination of the motivations and ethics behind making art.”
Earlier, Spiotta won the 2017 John Updike Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her earlier novels are Stone Arabia (Scribner, 2011), Eat the Document (Scribner, 2006) and Lightening Field (Scribner, 2001).