I’m pleased to announce that MOTHERLUNGE  byKirstin Scott   has been shortlisted for the Flaherty Dunnan First Novel Prize by The Center for Fiction. The winner will be named at an awards dinner on December 11th.

http://www.centerforfiction.org/awards/the-flaherty-dunnan-first-novel-prize/flaherty-dunnan-2013-short-list/  

Winner of the AWP Award for the Novel -- Publishers Weekly Pick of the Week

Thea escapes the doldrums of her mother's manic depression in order to help her sister, Pavia, whose marriage is crumbling and who’s recently discovered she’s pregnant. When Pavia begins to echo their mother's unpredictable behavior, Thea must step in to care for her sister and newborn nephew, which leads her to make some decisions about her own burgeoning desire for children. MOTHERLUNGE is an eloquent and irreverent debut novel about first sex, true love, chronic sibling rivalry; it’s about the deepest fear of young (and not-so-young) adulthood: the fear of inheriting a disappointing life. It's motherly advice, too — featuring wigs, dogs, road trips, and medicine — a guide to the essential experiences of being female, "born unto a librarian, named for the goddess of sight,” waiting for the future to arrive. With sly wit and surprising joy, MOTHERLUNGE considers the flaws in the family line and celebrates the promise that staggers alongside.

“…voice is where Kirstin Scott astonishes, both in the gutsy yet precise and lyrical voice of her narrator Thea, and in the brilliantly realized voices that Scott bestows on the rest of Thea’s family. Here we have a tribe of mothers-gone-wrong and their sidelined, well-meaning, hapless men – and yet, owing to the sheer inventiveness of Scott’s prose style, the family portrait that emerges is almost (well, not quite) affirmative. We believe in these characters and even believe that some good – some human equivalent of that ribald, generous and knowing voice -- will come out of all this.”

-Jaimy Gordon, National Book Award winning author ofLord of Misrule

“Funny and smart…Scott has created characters we believe in and wish well, characters who feel real—strange and sad and happy, like real people are.”

-Publisher’s Weekly starred review & Pick of the Week

“In this solid first novel, Scott, winner of the 2011 AWP Prize in the Novel, renders wonderfully offbeat characters in crisp, polished prose.”

-Booklist starred review

“Told with dazzling prose, Motherlunge is a wry, luminous exploration of the legacy of motherhood here, about the afflictions that may cycle through generations… a thoroughly engaging novel, with wonderful turns of phrase in every sentence, and its witty humor announces a welcome new voice in American fiction, full of charm and tender wisdom.”

-Don Lee, author ofThe Collective