The Townsend Prize for Fiction Reception Sponsored by:

• The Georgia Center for the Book

• The Atlanta Writer's Club

• The Marcus Jewish Community Center

The 2012 Townsend Prize for Fiction Reception and Award Ceremony

Only a few short weeks remain before Georgia Perimeter College’s Southern Academy for Literary Arts and Scholarly Research and The Chattahoochee Review will host the reception and award ceremony for the 2012 Townsend Prize for Fiction on Thursday, April 26th at the Atlanta Botanical Garden’s Day Hall.

Created in memory of Jim Townsend, founding editor of Atlanta magazine and mentor to some of the state’s most lauded men and women of letters, the prize is presented biennially to a Georgia writer who is judged to have published the most outstanding book of fiction during the preceding two years.

The price of registration to the 2012 Townsend Prize for Fiction is $40, which includes the following:

•  Parking at the garden’s Sage Parking Facility

• Self-guided tours of the botanical garden beginning at 5 p.m. when the doors open

• Book sales and signings with the 2012 Townsend Prize-nominated authors beginning at 6:30 p.m.

• A catered buffet-style reception and jazz band performances beginning at 7 p.m., and

• The keynote address and award ceremony beginning at 7:30 p.m.

• Alcoholic beverages will be available at a cash bar for separate purchase.

Registration to the reception and award ceremony is available online in advance only via the following link: https://giving.gpc.edu/townsend

The deadline for all online registration is April 11, 2012 at 5 p.m.

The keynote speaker for this year’s award will be acclaimed short story writer and novelist Ann Beattie. Ms. Beattie is the winner of the PEN/Malamud Award for achievement in the short story form (2000) and the Rea Award for the short story (2005). Her work has appeared in four collections of “PEN/O’Henry Prize Stories” and in John Updike’s “The Best American Short Stories of the Century.” Ms. Beattie is currently the Edgar Allan Poe Chair of the Department of English and Creative Writing at the University of Virginia.

Past winners of the Townsend Prize for Fiction have included Alice Walker (The Color Purple, 1984); Ferrol Sams (When All the World Was Young, 1991); Ha Jin (The Bridegroom: Stories, 2002) and Kathryn Stockett (The Help, 2010).

Finalists for the 2012 award are as follows:

• Daniel Black, Perfect Peace (St. Martin’s Griffin)

• Lynn Cullen, Reign of Madness (Putnam Adult)

• Ann Hite, Ghost on Black Mountain (Gallery Books)

• Joshilyn Jackson, Backseat Saints (Grand Central Publishing)

• Collin Kelley, Remain in Light (Vanilla Heart Publishing)

• Thomas Mullen, The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers (Random House)

• Andrew Plattner, A Marriage of Convenience (BkMk Press at the University of Missouri-Kansas City)

• Josh Russell, My Bright Midnight (Louisiana State University Press)

• Joseph Skibell, A Curable Romantic (Algonquin Books)

• Amanda Kyle Williams, The Stranger You Seek (Bantam)

With a legacy of more than a quarter century, the Townsend Prize is the state of Georgia’s oldest and most prestigious literary award. Georgia Perimeter College’s Chattahoochee Review has been custodian of the award since 1997, and this year has partnered with The Georgia Center for the Book, The Atlanta Writer’s Club, and the Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta to host the event.

For more information about the 2012 Townsend Prize for Fiction reception and award ceremony, contact the Southern Academy at 678.891.3275.