About the Roger Shattuck Award
The annual Roger Shattuck Prize for Criticism is devoted to the support and encouragement of emerging critics. Each year, two deserving critics will receive this prize, which includes a $5,000 cash award. The Center for Fiction is extremely grateful to the Shattuck family for supporting the award. This year's award presentation was held on May 30th.
2012 Award Winner: Ruth Franklin
Ruth Franklin is a literary critic and senior editor at The New Republic, where she has been on staff since 1999. Her first book, A Thousand Darknesses: Lies and Truth in Holocaust Fiction Read More
2012 Award Winner: David Yaffe
David Yaffe was born in Dallas, TX and received his B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and his Ph.D. in English from the CUNY Graduate Center. He is the author of Fascinating Rhythm: Reading Jazz in American Writing and Bob Dylan: Like a Complete Unknown. Read More
THE FUTURE OF CRITICISM
On April 17, 2010 The Center for Fiction in partnership with the National Book Critics Circle and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy presented a conference in honor of Roger Shattuck, The Future of Criticism. The critic and scholar Roger Shattuck believed in writing for the reader, in order to enrich the experience of reading. This conference honored Shattuck's role as critic to the people while also exploring the directions that criticism may take in the next ten years. At the conference, the first two winners of the new Roger Shattuck Prize in Criticism were announced. MORE ABOUT THE CONFERENCE
ABOUT ROGER SHATTUCK
Roger Shattuck was a distinguished scholar, writer and literary critic, perhaps best known for his studies on French literature, culture and Proust. After serving time in the Army Air Force during WW II and later, finishing his bachelor's degree at Yale, Shattuck moved to Paris. It was in France that he developed his interest and love for French culture, and where he met his wife Nora White, a dancer for the Les Ballets Russes des Monte Carlo and Le Ballet de Paris. He published his first book, The Banquet Years: The Origins of the Avant-Garde in France, 1885 to WW I in 1958, after moving back to New York. The book was overwhelmingly well-received, and he went on to publish several books of literary criticism as well as several definitive texts on Proust. Read more
