Enid Shomer Wins
Florida Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing
Enid Shomer, an elegant writer of poetry and fiction noted for incisive characterization and beguiling description, has won the 2013 Florida Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing. The award, announced Monday, will be presented on March 20 at a special luncheon held in the Governor’s Mansion in Tallahassee.
“It’s like lightning striking,” Shomer said when informed of the honor. “It’s just a wonderful feeling that people have read my work. It makes me want to write more—and faster!”
“Enid Shomer is one of the writers who have helped to define modern Florida,” said Janine Farver, executive director of the Florida Humanities Council, which sponsors the award program. “Her poetry and short stories explore the people, the places, the landscape and the mythology of our state.” The Florida Humanities Council, affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, oversees the nomination process, convenes a panel of independent judges, and announces the winner.
Shomer, a resident of Tampa, is the first woman to be recognized by the Lifetime Achievement Award program, now in its fourth year. A five-person panel selected her from among 13 nominees. The judges praised the quality and range of her work and her significance as “a Florida voice.”
“I would not think of teaching a course in contemporary Florida poetry without including her work,” said Maurice O’Sullivan, who served as one of the judges. O’Sullivan is Kenneth Curry professor of English at Rollins College in Winter Park.
Shomer said the award provides welcome affirmation. “I’m thrilled and I’m also humbled, because I think this state is full of wonderful creative geniuses,” she said. “Writing is such a solitary occupation. You don’t get a lot of feedback. To get an affirmation like this from the wider world is thrilling and very unusual. You suddenly feel this connection with the reader.”
Shomer, who is in her late 60s, was born in Washington, D.C., received her undergraduate degree from Wellesley College and earned a master’s degree at the University of Miami. She is a lecturer in the University of Tampa’s Master of Fine Arts program.
Her work includes short stories, poetry and, most recently, a novel. Two volumes of her short stories, Tourist Season and Imaginary Men, and much of her poetry tell tales of people and places in Florida. Her recently published novel, The Twelve Rooms of the Nile, received critical acclaim and was named as one of the six best historical novels of the year by National Public Radio.
Among those who nominated Shomer were editors at major publishing houses. Anjali Singh, former senior editor at Simon & Schuster, said Shomer must be considered as “among the best living American writers working today.” She praised Shomer’s “prodigious gifts as a storyteller and writer” and said, “She writes with a rare psychological acuity and a poet’s attention to detail.”
Shomer’s poems and essays have been published in more than 30 magazines and journals, including The New Yorker; The Atlantic, Paris Review and Kenyon Review. Her short story collection, Tourist Season, won the gold medal for fiction in the 2008 Florida Book Awards competition. It was also a finalist for the John Gardner Fiction Prize and in 2007 was chosen for Barnes and Noble’s “Discover Great New Writers” series.
She has won numerous prizes for poetry, including from Southern Poetry Review and the Virginia Quarterly Review. Her work has appeared in more than 70 anthologies and textbooks.
The three previous recipients of the Florida Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing were: Patrick D. Smith, whose work incudes the beloved Florida novel A Land Remembered, in 2012; Carl Hiaasen, a Miami journalist and best-selling novelist who virtually invented the Florida Noir genre, in 2011; and Michael V. Gannon, the eminent Florida historian and University of Florida professor emeritus, in 2010.
The Florida Humanities Council, established in 1973, uses the disciplines of the humanities to develop public programs and resources that explore Florida’s history, literary and artistic traditions, cultural values, and ethics.
CONTACTS:
Janine Farver, [email protected] (727) 873-2007
Barbara O’Reilley, [email protected] (727) 873-2012
The members of the 2013 judging panel were: Maurice O’Sullivan, Kenneth Curry professor of English at Rollins College; Lester Abberger, member of Florida Humanities Council Board; Judith Ring, Director of the Division of Library and Information Services, Florida Department of State; Lynne Barrett, author and professor of creative writing at Florida International University; and Gary Mormino, Florida Humanities Council scholar-in-residence and emeritus history professor at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg.
“It’s like lightning striking,” Shomer said when informed of the honor. “It’s just a wonderful feeling that people have read my work. It makes me want to write more—and faster!”
“Enid Shomer is one of the writers who have helped to define modern Florida,” said Janine Farver, executive director of the Florida Humanities Council, which sponsors the award program. “Her poetry and short stories explore the people, the places, the landscape and the mythology of our state.” The Florida Humanities Council, affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, oversees the nomination process, convenes a panel of independent judges, and announces the winner.
Shomer, a resident of Tampa, is the first woman to be recognized by the Lifetime Achievement Award program, now in its fourth year. A five-person panel selected her from among 13 nominees. The judges praised the quality and range of her work and her significance as “a Florida voice.”
“I would not think of teaching a course in contemporary Florida poetry without including her work,” said Maurice O’Sullivan, who served as one of the judges. O’Sullivan is Kenneth Curry professor of English at Rollins College in Winter Park.
Shomer said the award provides welcome affirmation. “I’m thrilled and I’m also humbled, because I think this state is full of wonderful creative geniuses,” she said. “Writing is such a solitary occupation. You don’t get a lot of feedback. To get an affirmation like this from the wider world is thrilling and very unusual. You suddenly feel this connection with the reader.”
Shomer, who is in her late 60s, was born in Washington, D.C., received her undergraduate degree from Wellesley College and earned a master’s degree at the University of Miami. She is a lecturer in the University of Tampa’s Master of Fine Arts program.
Her work includes short stories, poetry and, most recently, a novel. Two volumes of her short stories, Tourist Season and Imaginary Men, and much of her poetry tell tales of people and places in Florida. Her recently published novel, The Twelve Rooms of the Nile, received critical acclaim and was named as one of the six best historical novels of the year by National Public Radio.
Among those who nominated Shomer were editors at major publishing houses. Anjali Singh, former senior editor at Simon & Schuster, said Shomer must be considered as “among the best living American writers working today.” She praised Shomer’s “prodigious gifts as a storyteller and writer” and said, “She writes with a rare psychological acuity and a poet’s attention to detail.”
Shomer’s poems and essays have been published in more than 30 magazines and journals, including The New Yorker; The Atlantic, Paris Review and Kenyon Review. Her short story collection, Tourist Season, won the gold medal for fiction in the 2008 Florida Book Awards competition. It was also a finalist for the John Gardner Fiction Prize and in 2007 was chosen for Barnes and Noble’s “Discover Great New Writers” series.
She has won numerous prizes for poetry, including from Southern Poetry Review and the Virginia Quarterly Review. Her work has appeared in more than 70 anthologies and textbooks.
The three previous recipients of the Florida Lifetime Achievement Award for Writing were: Patrick D. Smith, whose work incudes the beloved Florida novel A Land Remembered, in 2012; Carl Hiaasen, a Miami journalist and best-selling novelist who virtually invented the Florida Noir genre, in 2011; and Michael V. Gannon, the eminent Florida historian and University of Florida professor emeritus, in 2010.
The Florida Humanities Council, established in 1973, uses the disciplines of the humanities to develop public programs and resources that explore Florida’s history, literary and artistic traditions, cultural values, and ethics.
CONTACTS:
Janine Farver, [email protected] (727) 873-2007
Barbara O’Reilley, [email protected] (727) 873-2012
The members of the 2013 judging panel were: Maurice O’Sullivan, Kenneth Curry professor of English at Rollins College; Lester Abberger, member of Florida Humanities Council Board; Judith Ring, Director of the Division of Library and Information Services, Florida Department of State; Lynne Barrett, author and professor of creative writing at Florida International University; and Gary Mormino, Florida Humanities Council scholar-in-residence and emeritus history professor at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg.