For Joe Clifford, a Novel, another Novel, and an Award

Joe Clifford, who has been living in the San Francisco area since graduating from the FIU MFA Program, is having a busy year.  As already reported here in January, his story collection Choice Cuts was published by Snubnose Press.  Now his first novel, Junkie Love, was published by Battered Suitcase Press in March, his second novel, Wake the Undertaker, is just out from Snubnose Press, and he has been awarded a San Francisco Acker Award in Fiction.

Junkie Love is an autobiographical novel, of which The Ampersand Review says, "From the first page, everything you experience through Clifford’s graceful yet biting narrative is beautiful and tragic. The journey over a decade of addiction to seek redemption is compelling, daunting, with no easy escape or roadmap home found in track-marred arms." Wake the Undertaker, a noir thriller that harks back to vintage pulp, was originally Clifford's MFA thesis The Lone Palm.  You can read (or hear) interviews with Clifford about his journey to the publication of his three books (in a short time, but years in the making) on his website.

The Acker Awards "for Achievement in the avant garde" are given to artists "who have made outstanding contributions in their discipline in defiance of convention,  or else served their fellow writers and artists in outstanding ways."  The award ceremonies will take place in San Francisco on June 6, 2013.

Joe Clifford is currently Acquisitions Editor at Gutter Books and Managing Editor for the Flash Fiction Offensive. With his wife Justine Clifford he co-produces Lip Service West, a bi-monthly reading series for true stories. A short film/book trailer for Junkie Love is up on You Tube. Rumor has it that Clifford will be in Miami in September to participate the annual alumni reading at Books & Books.

Dennis Lehane Wins Edgar® Award for Best Novel

Dennis Lehane with his award.

Dennis Lehane received the Best Novel Edgar^® Award from for Live By Night at the 67th annual 2013 Edgar Awards banquet in New York City on May 2nd.  The prestigious awards are given by the Mystery Writers of America.

Shelf Awareness reported from that Lehane's acceptance speech, "paid tribute to the librarians who 'offered a light in the darkness for the kids from the wrong side of the tracks.'"

Live By Night, Lehane's tenth book, also received the Gold Medal for Fiction in the Florida Book Awards in March.  Lehane, who received his MFA from Florida International University, is co-director of the Eckerd College Writers In Paradise Conference.

Preston L. Allen's Every Boy Should Have a Man Published

Akashic Books has just published Every Boy Should Have a Man, by FIU MFA alumnus Preston L. Allen.  Publishers Weekly says "In a future where primitive 'mans' are considered pets or food by the dominant, giant humanoi 'oafs,' one female man and her daughter become the cherished possessions, then friends, of a young oaf who learns to see them as more than just creatures."  Booklist calls it "Imaginative, versatile, and daring...Allen sharpens our perceptions of class divides, racism, enslavement, and abrupt and devastating climate change to create a delectably adventurous, wily, funny, and wise cautionary parable."

Allen is a professor at Miami-Dade College. His previous widely-praised novels from Akashic are Jesus Boy and All or Nothing, and his story collection (and thesis) Churchboys and Other Sinners won the Sonya H. Stone Prize in Fiction and was published by Carolina Wren Press. He will be reading from his new novel at 7 this evening, May 8, at Books & Books on Miami Beach.