Attention unpublished Aggie alumni novelists! After a yearlong hiatus, the Maurice Prize for Fiction is back — and bigger than ever before. The $10,000 award, doubled in size this year, recognizes the best book-length prose fiction written by a UC Davis graduate who has not yet published or been accepted for publication by the contest deadline. Manuscript submissions are being accepted through July 15 for the 2022 contest.
2019 Maurice Prize for Fiction:
Peter Shahrokh (English, M.A. ’75; Ph.D. ’83; MBA ’99)
I started my winning novel, A Wind Will Come, 30 years ago. The premise was that a professional engineer had chosen to become a chef, and he was then lured by the promise of owning his own restaurant by an ex-girlfriend if he found her lost lover. The lover was a psychopath, and that made things a little interesting. After I’d done the first two chapters, I couldn’t figure out where I was going with it. Ten years later I picked it up again and finished the last three chapters.
Best-selling author John Lescroart says it took winning a prestigious award early in his career to “believe I could be a writer.” The Maurice Prize for Fiction at UC Davis, now in its 14th year, is Lescroart’s way of paying it forward. A UC Berkeley graduate and resident of Davis, Lescroart established the Maurice Prize, named for his father, to encourage UC Davis alumni writers. Peter Shahrokh (English, M.A. ’75, Ph.D. ’83; MBA ’99) won the 2019 prize for his manuscript, "A Wind Will Come."
Tene Goodwin, who graduated from the UC Davis College of Letters and Science this spring with a degree in economics and minor in professional writing, started immediately using her educational and international background by documenting the Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders visit to UC Davis.
LinkedIn Manager Crossed 'Corporate Attorney' off Career List When She Discovered Writing
When I started at UC Davis in 2004, I was undeclared as far as majors go but had aspirations of being a corporate attorney. A career placement quiz in eighth grade put the idea in my head. I decided that my love for writing and arguing would make this a great choice for me.
UC Davis Creative Writing graduate student Cristina Fries is one of the 12 winners of the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. It is given by PEN American, an organization that offers a wide range of support to writers.
Angela Morales (English, ’91) has won a Pen America Literary Award for her book of essays The Girls in My Town. The autobiographical essays are about growing up in Los Angeles.