The Edward Lewis Wallant Award

The Edward Lewis Wallant Award is presented annually to an American writer whose published creative work of fiction is considered to have significance for the American Jew.

The award was established shortly after the untimely death in December 1962 of Edward Lewis Wallant, gifted author of The Human Season and The Pawnbroker, by Dr. and Mrs. Irving Waltman of West Hartford. The Waltmans were prompted to create this memorial because of their admiration for Edward Wallant's literary ability.

A panel of three critics serves as judges, and they seek out a writer whose fiction bears a kinship to the work of Wallant, and preferably an author who is younger and unrecognized. Among those who have received the award in past years are: Leo Litwak, Chaim Potok, Cynthia Ozick, Curt Leviant, Thane Rosenbaum, Myla Goldberg, Jonathan Rosen, and Nicole Krauss.

The 2008 Edward Lewis Wallant Award recipient is Eileen Pollack, for her collection of stories and novellas, In the Mouth. Pollack is the Zell Director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Michigan.

Visit Eileen's Web site

Eileen Pollack was born and grew up in Liberty, N.Y., the heart of the Jewish Catskills, where her grandparents owned and operated a small hotel and her father was the town dentist. A graduate of Yale University with a BS in physics, Eileen later earned an MFA from the University of Iowa, where she was awarded a Teaching-Writing Fellowship.

She is the author of a collection of short fiction, The Rabbi in the Attic And Other Stories , a novel, Paradise, New York, and a work of creative nonfiction called Woman Walking Ahead: In Search of Catherine Weldon and Sitting Bull, which won a 2003 WILLA finalist award. Eileen's essays, articles, and reviews have appeared in many periodicals; her innovative textbook and anthology, Creative Nonfiction: A Guide to Form, Content, and Style, with Readings, was published in January 2009 by Wadsworth/Cengage. Her new collection of stories and novellas called In the Mouth was published in April 2008 by Four Way Books and in addition to being named the winner of the 2008 Edward Lewis Wallant Award, was shortlisted for the Sophie Brody Medal for Jewish literature. Eileen has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Michener Foundation, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, and the Massachusetts Arts Council. Her stories have appeared in journals such as Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Michigan Quarterly Review, SubTropics, Agni, and New England Review. Her novella "The Bris" was chosen to appear in the Best American Short Stories 2007 anthology, edited by Stephen King, while her stories have been awarded two Pushcart Prizes, the Cohen Award for best fiction of the year from Ploughshares, and similar awards from Literary Review and MQR. She lives in Ann Arbor and is the Zell Director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Michigan.

Read more reviews

New submissions are welcomed annually. The deadline for submissions is November 1 of each calendar year. For more information, please contact Avinoam Patt, Ph.D., Feltman Professor of Modern Jewish History and Coordinator of the Wallant Award Committee at the University of Hartford at MGCJS@hartford.edu.

YEAR	AUTHOR	TITLE
2008	Eileen Pollack	In the Mouth
2007	Ehud Havazelet	Bearing the Body
2006	No Award
2005	Nicole Krauss	The History of Love
2004	Jonathan Rosen	Joy Comes in the Morning
2003	Joan Leegant	An Hour in Paradise
2002	Dara Horn	In the Image
2001	Myla Goldberg	Bee Season
2000	Judy Budnitz	If I Told You Once
1999	Allegra Goodman	Kaaterskill Falls
1998	No Award
1997	Harvey Grossinger	The Quarry
1996	Thane Rosenbaum	Elijah Visible
1995	Rebecca Goldstein	Mazel
1994	No Award
1993	Gerald Shapiro	From Hunger
1992	Melvin Jules Bukiet	Stories of an Imaginary Childhood
1991	No Award
1990	No Award
1989	Jerome Badanes	The Final Opus of Leon Solomon
1988	Tova Reich	Master of the Return
1987	Steve Stern	Lazar Malkin Enters Heaven
1986	Daphne Merkin	Enchantment
1985	Jay Neuseboren	Before My Life Begins
1984	No Award
1983	Francine Prose	Hungry Hearts
1982	No Award
1981	Allen Hoffman	Kaganís Superfecta
1980	Johanna Kaplan	O My America
1979	No Award
1978	No Award
1977	Curt Leviant	The Yemenite Girl
1976	No Award
1975	Anne Bernays	Growing Up Rich
1974	Susan Fromberg Schaeffer	Anya
1973	Arthur A. Cohen	In the Days of Simon Stern
1972	Robert Kotlowitz	Somewhere Else
1971	Cynthia Ozick	The Pagan Rabbi
1970	No Award
1969	Leo Litwak	Waiting for the News
1968	No Award
1967	Chaim Potok	The Chosen
1966	Gene Hurwitz	Home Is Where You Start From
1965	Hugh Nissenson	A Pile of Stones
1964	Seymour Epstein	Leah
1963	Norman Fruchter	Coat Upon a Stick

The Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies is devoted to teaching and original research in Judaic Studies from the Biblical to the modern periods. Faculty from around the world have created programs that are diverse and stimulating to the student body.

Founded in 1985 by a major endowment, the Center offers you an opportunity to choose from a rich array of exciting classes in six different areas: History, Bible, Jewish Law and Literature, Hebrew and Yiddish.

As part of the Greenberg Center's Spring 2009 schedule, In the Mouth will also be taught as part of Feltman Professor Avinoam Patt's JS/ENG 324, Modern European Jewish Literature. The class will meet on Mondays and Wednesdays, 2:55-4:10pm.