Wilkes University’s Maslow Graduate Program in Creative Writing and the James Jones Literary Society have named two fellows in their James Jones First Novel competition.
For the first time since the James Jones First Novel Fellowship was established in 1992, judges have selected two writers rather than one to jointly share the title of fellow. Thomas Andrew Green of Kennesaw, Georgia, and Julie Ries of the Hudson Valley area of New York, have each been awarded $9,000 for the top prize. The judges did not award first or second runners-up prizes this year. There were 627 submissions.
Green was named a fellow for his novel, Soon as I Find Jake. His work has appeared in Amelia, Crosscurrents, Southwest, Negative Capability, Apple Valley Review, The Madison Review and others. Winner of the Society of Southwest Authors Short Story Competition, he attended Bread Loaf Writers Conference at Middlebury College in Vermont, as well as Ploughshares magazine/Emerson College’s International Fiction Writing Seminar at Kasteel Well in the Netherlands. Green holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Central Arkansas in philosophy and a master’s degree in American Indian studies from the University of Arizona.
Ries was named a fellow for her novel, The Hunger Bride. Her fiction has appeared in Guernica, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, La Piccioletta Barca and Ark/angel, and was long-listed for the Fish Short Story Prize by Colum McCann. She holds an MFA from New York University and a bachelor’s degree from Yale University and has attended writing workshops through A Public Space, Hedgebrook and Beyond Baroque and others. Additionally, Ries served as the manager of an Art Deco historic monument in Los Angeles and taught English and expository writing at the high school and undergraduate levels.
The James Jones First Novel Fellowship was established in 1992 to “honor the spirit of unblinking honesty, determination, and insight into modern culture as exemplified by (the writings of) James Jones.” Jones was the author of From Here to Eternity as well as the novels Some Came Running and The Thin Red Line, among others.
