An assistant professor of English and humanities at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette has won the 2015 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction.
Dr. Lisa Graley is one of two authors to receive this year’s award, which is presented by the University of Georgia Press. Anne Raeff of San Francisco is the other recipient.
UGA Press will publish Graley’s “The Current that Carries” and Raeff’s “The Jungle Around Us” in fall 2016.
Graley’s book of poetry, “Box of Blue Horses,” was published in 2013. Her short stories have appeared in “Glimmer Train Stories” and the “McNeese Review.”
She earned the UL Lafayette Foundation’s Ray P. Authement Excellence in Teaching Award in 2010 and was granted an Awards to Louisiana Artists and Scholars sabbatical in 2009–10 by the Louisiana Board of Regents.
A press release posted on the UGA Press website cites comments on Graley’s forthcoming book made by Flannery O’Connor series editor Nancy Zafris: “ ‘The Current That Carries’ gifts us with stories about the diversity of rural life. A grandfather takes out his shotgun to stop wannabe gangbangers, only to discover one of the boys is his grandson. A widower befriends a young man trying to cope with his wife’s departure, the poisoning of his dogs, and the closing in each night of braver and braver coyotes.
“Flannery O’Connor commented that the more you study a single object, the more of the world you see in it. Nothing could better describe the relentless focus of these stories whose unwavering trueness of observation is softened by a tender heart. These stories cast a spell that cannot be undone.”
Lisa Graley photo by Chelsea Ellison