Hubbard's 'And We Stay' named Printz Honor Award book by ALA

 

Some people won't answer the phone if they don't recognize the number. I'm not one of those people. It could be a free trip to Paris or to the Grand Canyon or maybe someone's offering great gobs of cash. Who knows what awaits?

On the other hand, Jennifer Hubbard, a young adult novelist who once taught at Charlotte Country Day School and now lives in Salisbury, doesn't answer strange numbers.

You might say what happened recently will change that.

The call came on the eve of Super Bowl Sunday. Jennifer was at home, working the New York Times cross-word puzzle. Ring. Ring. The phone showed a Tennessee area code.

She let it ring.

Jennifer and her husband went out to dinner, and the calls continued. Once. Twice. She ignored  each one.

As she was stepping into Salsibury's Keppel Auditorium for a performance of the North Carolina Symphony: ring, ring. This time, a New York number. Jennifer listened to the voice mail, which chastised her for not answering the previous calls.

So Jennifer returns the Tennessee call and learns that...

Her 2014 young adult novel, And We Stay, had been named a Printz Honor Book!

Now, what does this mean exactly?

The Michael L. Printz Award, given annually by the American Library Association, honors the best book written for teens based on its literary merit. In addition, the Printz Committee names up to four honor books, which also represent the best writing in young adult literature.

So Jennifer's book now keeps company with past winners of the Printz Honor, including The Book Thief, by Marcus Zusak, and Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson.

This means that And We Stay will be in print for a long time to come. It also means that every library in the country will want to have a copy on its shelves. It means a lot of things, really, but most of all, Jennifer's hoping it means that her work will be taught in high schools, and that she'll be invited to talk with students about it. 

Oh, and Sofia Coppola, if you are reading this, Jennifer would also very much like for you to be the one to adapt the novel into a screenplay and direct the film version.

 

Recognition, Prize Money and More for Area Writers

Susan Ludvigson

Jennifer Hubbard

Susan Ludvigson, professor emerita at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, is this year's winner of the prestigious James Dickey Award from Five Points magazine in Atlanta. Her winning poems,"Divigations," "Mythologies" and "Sharing the Territory," will be published in the fall issue of Five Points and are included in her new manuscript, as yet untitled. The award carries a $1,000 prize. Ludvigson has nine poetry collections from Louisiana State University Press and has received many honors over the years, including Guggenheim and Fulbright fellowships, as well as fellowships from the NEA and the North Carolina Arts Council. She is the widow of fiction writer Scott Ely, who also taught for many years at Winthrop.

Kathryn Schwille's short-short story, "FM104," which appeared in Issue 20 of the literary journal Memorious, has won a spot on the 2014 Wigleaf Top Very Short Fiction List (under 1,000 words), selected from about 200 nominations of stories that appeared online last year. The judge says Schwille's story "...speaks in a hybrid language of beautiful lunacy and keen prophecy." Schwille's fiction has appeared previously in such literary  journals as Crazyhorse, West Branch and Sycamore Review. She is a recipient of a 2014 North Carolina Arts Council Fellowship. "FM04" is the opening to her manuscript of short stories, "24 Seconds," set against the backdrop the Columbia shuttle disaster in East Texas. Schwille lives in Charlotte and earned her MFA at Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa.

The young adult novel, "And We Stay" (Random House), by former Charlotte Country Day English teacher Jennifer Hubbard, now of Salisbury, is on the summer reading list for students at Woodberry Forest boarding school in Madison County, Va. Also on the list -- students can select three and no fair listening to audio books -- John Green's "The Fault in Our Stars," Nick Hornby's "Slam," and Pat Conroy's "My Losing Season." Hubbard's novel, set on the campus of a girls' Massachusetts boarding school, is "quite a page-turner," says the blurb. "Part mystery, part bildungsroman, this intelligent novel brings us into contact with a complex, conflicted heroine who doesn't care much about following the rules." Hubbard is a former English teacher at Woodberry Forest and is 100 pages into her third novel for young adults, modeled on five girls she taught at Country Day.