Blackbird ArchiveThe Tarumoto Short Fiction Prize Reading
A Reading by Ron Carlson and Kelly Cherry
The first awarding of the Rebecca Mitchell Tarumoto Short Fiction Prize for outstanding short fiction took place on March 28, 2012, at a gala reading hosted by Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia.
In our capture of the event, Kelly Cherry, inaugural winner of the Tarumoto Fiction Prize, reads from her winning story, “On Familiar Terms,” published in Blackbird v10n1. Fiction writer Ron Carlson reads an excerpt from his novel, The Signal (Viking, 2009).
Terry Oggel provides introductory remarks for the evening and recognizes David Tarumoto, who introduces the prize.
The Rebecca Mitchell Tarumoto Short Fiction Prize periodically awards $2,000 to the best work of short fiction published in Blackbird, with emphasis on work by an emerging or underappreciated writer.
The prize is funded by David Tarumoto in memory of his wife, Rebecca Mitchell Tarumoto, to honor her devotion to the art of writing fiction and to expand the audience for outstanding short stories, as well as to serve as encouragement to writers early in their careers.
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Kelly Cherry is the author of seventeen books, eight chapbooks, and two works of translation. Her most recent titles are Hazard and Prospect: New and Selected Poems (2007) and the novel In the Wink of An Eye (2004), both from Louisiana State University Press; History, Passion, Freedom, Death, and Hope: Prose About Poetry (University of Tampa Press, 2005); We Can Still Be Friends , a novel (Soho Press, 2003), and the poetic sequence Welsh Table Talk (Book Arts Conservatory of Washington, D.C., 2004). She currently lives in Halifax, Virginia.