Bill Beverly is the winner of the 2017 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award, in honor of his 2016 novel “Dodgers,” the Mark Twain House & Museum announced Thursday.
Beverly will receive his $25,000 prize at a ceremony on Nov. 30 at the Hartford historic home where Samuel Clemens lived with his family from 1874 to 1891. Nov. 30 is Twain’s 182nd birthday.
The award, presented by the museum, is given to the author whose book, published in the previous calendar year, best embodies an “American voice.” This is the second year of the award. Last year, it was given to T.C. Boyle for his novel “The Harder They Come.”
Two runners-up are Stuart Nadler for “The Inseparables” and Don DeLillo for “Zero K.” They will be awarded $1,000 each.
Judges for the final round were author Roy Blount, Jr.; Hartford Public Library Executive Director Bridget Quinn-Carey; and Walter Harrison, former president of the University of Hartford.
Beverly grew up in Kalamazoo, Mich., and studied at Oberlin College and University of Florida. His previous book was the nonfiction “On the Lam: Narratives of Flight in J. Edgar Hoover’s America.” He teaches American literature and writing at Trinity University in Washington, D.C.
“Dodgers” tells the story of a Los Angeles gang member, East, who is sent out of state to kill a witness. The journey takes him into an America he is not familiar with, forcing him to search his soul and decide his future.
“Problematic as it is, in principle, for a white writer to do black voices, I’d say Beverly carries it off, without being showy about it. The reaching across racial lines is certainly in the tradition of Twain,” Blount said.
Harrison agreed that the book carries on the Twain tradition.
“Like [Huckleberry Finn], East considers himself an outlaw, not squarely within any of the worlds he can navigate. Like Huck, he has a troubled relationship with his outlaw father, and like Finn, he travels across America in search of something, offering wonderful observations of the American scenes he is traveling through.”
Admission to the 7:30 p.m. awards ceremony is free, but registration is required. Admission to the 6 p.m. pre-awards reception and meet-and-greet is $75. Museum trustees David Baldacci and Roger Michel, Jr. will preside over the awards ceremony. Reservations: marktwainhouse.org.
