Parthenon Prize

More than 40 Tennessee book lovers are in the midst of evaluating manuscripts for the 2008 Parthenon Prize for Fiction, Nashville's own book award. The John Spence, a local businessman, founded the Parthenon Prize in 2007 as a national contest to find and publish excellent literature and to nurture Nashville's community of readers and writers.  Volunteers--some are professional writers, teachers, and editors; all are voracious readers--are poring through the more than 240 entries to this year's contest. These volunteers will choose the novel finalists that go on to judge Alice Randall, author of The Wind Done Gone and Pushkin and the Queen of Spades, to choose the winner.

The Parthenon Prize is open to any unpublished full length novel written in English, and this year's winner will receive a $15,000 cash prize and a publishing contract from Hooded Friar Press. The winning author and volunteer readers will be honored at a party on October 11th, coinciding with the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville.

The inaugural Parthenon Prize went to Minneapolis-based writer Scott Muskin for his novel The Annunciations of Hank Meyerson: Momma's Boy and Scholar, selected by 2007 judge Tony Earley. Early offered the following praise for Muskin's book, which will be released by Hooded Friar Press this fall:

"The Annunciations of Hank Meyerson, Momma's Boy and Scholar is a vibrant, unruly   stew of a book. Part slacker comedy and part Cain-and-Abel tragedy, it simmers, and ultimately boils over, with the long list of appropriations -- cultural, familial, marital, extra-marital -- the title character makes in order to construct a self he can live with. Hank Meyerson is simultaneously insightful and clueless, lovable and despicable, righteous, unrighteous and self-righteous, in the myriad ways only the best drawn characters in fiction are."

More details about the Parthenon Prize, including submission guidelines and an excerpt from the 2007 winner, are available at www.parthenonprize.com. If you are interested in being a reader for the 2009 contest, please send an email to info@parthenonprize.com.