The Townsend Prize for Fiction

2010 Winner

Kathryn Stockett, author of The Help

 

Named for Jim Townsend, legendary Atlanta Magazine editor and mentor to many of Georgia's greatest writers, the Townsend Prize for Fiction is the state's oldest and most prestigious literary award. It is presented biennially to a writer deemed by an independent panel of judges to have produced the most outstanding work of fiction during the preceding two years.

 Georgia Perimeter College and its internationally-recognized literary magazine, The Chattahoochee Review, became custodians of the Townsend Prize in 1997.  In 2008 The Georgia Center for the Book joined GPC as a presenting sponsor of the Prize.  The historic Margaret Mitchell House in downtown Atlanta became the new venue for the award reception and presentation in 2010.

 The recipient of the 2010 Townsend Prize for Fiction is Kathryn Stockett for her novel, The Help. The next Townsend Prize will be awarded in the spring of 2012. Please check this site for more information.

Past winners of the Townsend Prize for Fiction:
 

Celestine Sibley, Children, My Children (1982)
Alice Walker, The Color Purple (1984)
Philip Lee Williams, The Heart of a Distant Forest (1986)
Mary Hood, And Venus Is Blue (1988)
Sara Flanigan, Alice (1989)
Charlie Smith, The Lives of the Dead (1990)
Ferrol Sams, When All the World Was Young  (1991)
Pam Durban, The Laughing Place (1994)
JoAllen Bradham, Some Personal Papers (1996)
Judson Mitcham, The Sweet Everlasting (1998)
James Kilgo, Daughter of My People (2000)
Ha Jin, The Bridegroom: Stories (2002)
Terry Kay, The Valley of Light (2004)
Judson Mitcham, Sabbath Creek (2006)
Renee Dodd, A Cabinet of Wonders (2008)

Kathryn Stockett, The Help (2010)