May 30, 2008

Crab Orchard Review wins literary award

by Andrea Hahn

CARBONDALE, Ill. -- Crab Orchard Review, the literary journal published by the Department of English at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, won an Illinois Arts Council Literary Award for 2008.

The IAC Literary Awards go to individual works of fiction, poetry or creative non-fiction. The writers and the literary journals that published the award-winning work each receive $1,000 as part of the award. The purpose of the award program, as expressed by IAC, is "to promote awareness of non-commercial publishing in the state."

This year, Crab Orchard Review won for the fiction story, "Cami Chicks," by Julie Benesh of Chicago. The story appeared in Volume 12, No. 1 of the journal.

This year's literary award jury was: Geeta Kothari, fiction editor of Kenyon Review and an English professor at the University of Pittsburg; Alberto Rios, an award-winning poet and editorial adviser of Hayden's Ferry Review, Chandler, Ariz.; and Robert Stewart, editor of New Letters Quarterly and an English professor at the University of Missouri at Kansas City.

Crab Orchard Review is a biannual journal of creative literary works. The journal sponsors annual literary awards and co-publishes the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry with Southern Illinois University Press. The editorial board is Allison Joseph, editor and poetry editor, Carolyn Alessio, prose editor, and Jon Tribble, managing editor and Crab Orchard Series editor.

For more information about Crab Orchard Review, go to www.siu.edu/departments/english and follow the link to Crab Orchard Review.

For more information about the Illinois Arts Council, visit www.state.il.us/agency/iac.