Jessie van Eerden, associate professor of creative writing at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia, has been selected as the winner of the 2019 Dzanc Books Prize for Fiction. The award recognizes daring, original, and innovative writing.
Professor van Eerden was honored for her third novel, Call It Horses, which will be published in 2021. The award committee said that the book was “filled with poetry, working-class grit, and undogmatic spirituality, this novel shows us what we gain when we become outlaws in our own lives.”
After hearing she won the award, van Eerden said that “this novel has been a long journey, several years of exploring the story of spiritual liminality experienced by a woman standing just outside of fulfillment.”
Professor van Eerden is also the author of the novels My Radio Radio (Vandalia Press, 2016) and Glorybound (Wordfarm, 2012). She has also published a collection of essays entitled The Long Weeping (Orison Books).
A West Virginia native, van Eerden holds a bachelor’s degree in English from West Virginia University and a master of fine arts degree in nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa.