The Blog

In Alain Robbe-Grillet’s novella La Jalousie (1957), the unnamed narrator, whose presence is delineated only by the arrangement of exterior objects, relays his observations from behind a slatted window. Meticulous attention is paid to every nuance of gesture and tone in an intimate relationship, thus producing a composite portrait of an environment. No drastic event occurs but the robotic details of human behavior are revealed for their immense importance as the signifiers of emotion. Marc Rahe’s recent poetry collection, The Smaller Half, operates in much the same manner, but with one difference: the speaker’s shrewd surveillance is part of a human warmth that suffuses the entire collection.

We are thrilled to announce the winners of our 2011 contest. In fiction, the winner is John Van Kirk's "Landscape with Boys," about a neighborhood civil war. Fiction judge Allan Gurganus called it "a muscular, comic, ambitious, and very pure piece of writing."

For fiction runner-up, Gurganus chose Suzanne Scanlon's "Her 37th Year, An Index," a story told in alphabetized topic headings, describing it as "a thoroughly engrossing almanac of desire."

Patricia Hampl, nonfiction judge, said her choice for winner, "Life Care Center" by Helen Phillips, "manages its desperate material"—a visit to a severely disabled sister—"without indulgence."

The nonfiction runner-up, "City by the Woods: A Memoir" by Maria Rapoport, was, Hampl writes, "a real consideration of the lingering effects of emigration."