(February 6, 2013)

Richard Bausch to receive Centenary's Corrington Award February 25

SHREVEPORT, LA — Acknowledged master of the short story Richard Bausch has been selected to receive the 2013 John William Corrington Award for Literary Excellence. This February award ceremony, which will include a reading by the author, is free and open to the public.

"One of the things that has so impressed this department about his stories, besides the quality of the telling, is that they embody the meaningfulness of life by taking seriously, without the imposition of an ideological bias, the predicaments in which people find themselves, even when those predicaments could invite ridicule," said Dr. David Havird, Professor of English. "To put the matter a little differently, there is the stories' infinite inventiveness, itself a manifestation of the author's empathetic curiosity about the lives of others—his profound appreciation of the ambivalences that people wrestle with—and the complementary conviction that those lives signify."

Bausch is the author of eleven novels and eight collections of stories, including the novels Rebel Powers, In The Night Season, Hello To The Cannibals, and Peace and the story collections Spirits, Rare & Endangered Species, The Stories of Richard Bausch, and the recently released Something Is Out There. His novel The Last Good Time was made into a feature-length motion picture, released in April 1995.

Bausch's stories have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, The New Yorker, The Southern Review, The Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories, and The Pushcart Prize Stories. His stories have also been widely anthologized. The Modern Library published The Selected Stories of Richard Bausch in March 1996.

He has won two National Magazine Awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lila-Wallace Reader's Digest Fund Writer's Award, the Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and The 2004 PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story. He was elected to the Fellowship of Southern Writers in 1995.

Bausch is currently a professor at Chapman University in Orange, California, and the editor of the Norton Anthology of Short Fiction.

In preparation for Bausch's arrival on campus, all Centenary first-year students in English 101 are reading The Stories of Richard Bausch.

The Corrington Award was named for the novelist and Centenary alumnus John William Corrington '56 (1932-1988). He is best known for his short novel, Decoration Day. The Award recognizes a career of dedication to literary excellence and artistic accomplishment. The recipient is presented with a bronze medal, designed by Louisiana sculptor Clyde Connell.

The inaugural recipient of the Corrington Award in 1991 was Pulitzer Prize-winning author Eudora Welty. Other Corrington medalists include Elizabeth Spencer, James Dickey, Richard Wilbur, Eavan Boland, Michael Longley, Alice McDermott, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Tim O'Brien. The 2012 recipient was Joy Williams.

Since 2001-02, the Attaway family, Corrington family, and Provost Office have provided funding for the Corrington Award.