On March 16, 2019, the Society posted this call:
The Norman Mailer Society invites submissions for its first annual Graduate Writing Award, which recognizes high-quality graduate student work about or inspired by the work of Norman Mailer.
Eligible entries include academic papers or creative pieces composed by current graduate students. Submissions should be 10-15 pages, double-spaced, in 12 point Times New Roman font, and should be sent to Maggie McKinley, President of the Norman Mailer Society, at mmckinle harpercollege edu.
The deadline is June 1, 2019.
The winner of the Norman Mailer Society Graduate Writing Award receives:
- a $500 cash award
- a complimentary one-year membership in the Mailer Society, which includes that year’s issue of The Mailer Review
- an opportunity to work with the editor of The Mailer Review to publish a revised version of the essay or creative piece
Executive board members of the Norman Mailer Society will evaluate all entries and notify entrants of their decision.
Graduate students are also welcome to submit proposals for the annual Norman Mailer Conference, which will be held at Wilkes University from October 10–12, 2019. Students who present at the conference will receive a $100 travel grant. Proposals may also be sent to mmckinle harpercollege edu.
Another copy of this call on the Society’s site was dated February 3, 2019; the Society’s WordPress records date the call March 16, 2019, the date of this post.
A new prize for new scholars
The award was the Society’s own, judged by its Executive Board and open to graduate students writing either criticism or creative work. The call went out under the name of Maggie McKinley, who had become the Society’s president in 2017 (minutes, 2017); the Society’s records do not say who first proposed it. It offered more than a cash prize. The winner’s year of membership came with that year’s Mailer Review, and the Review’s editor, Phillip Sipiora, would work with the winner toward publishing a revised version.
It joined the Society’s older help for students. The Barry Leeds Travel Fund, established in 2015, offered $100 grants to students attending the conference that year (2019 membership drive), and the call promised a $100 travel grant to every student who presented at Wilkes that October.
In her letter to members of June 6, 2019, five days after the deadline, McKinley gave the award as an example of what their donations supported: the Society’s aim of encouraging the next generation of Mailer scholars and drawing them into the Society. “This year,” she wrote, the Society had launched its first annual graduate writing award, “which aims to recognize excellent graduate level work about or inspired by Norman Mailer”; it also continued to offer travel grants to students who presented at the conference (Society fund-drive letter, June 6, 2019).
What came of it
The Society’s records of that year say nothing more about the award. The business meeting at the 2019 conference at Wilkes heard reports on The Mailer Review, Board elections, the Lucid Award, and the treasury, and the program lists no presentation of a writing award. No later post on this site names a winner or repeats the call.
Students were on the Board’s mind that fall. At its meeting at Wilkes on October 11, 2019, Larry Schiller said he would like to see more students at the annual conference, and the Board agreed unanimously; holding conferences at or near universities and subsidizing students’ costs were proposed as the best ways to bring them, and Mike Lennon suggested that every professor in the Society try to bring one student to the next conference. Holding the 2020 conference at Monmouth University was in keeping with the Society’s goal of drawing more undergraduate and graduate students (Executive Board minutes, 2019). The 2019 conference itself had a session on undergraduate work on Mailer, led by John Buffalo Mailer and Nicole DePolo (program).
The pandemic moved the 2020 conference online. The agenda for the Board meeting on its last day, October 17, 2020, listed as its second item “Chris Busa Writing Award 2021,” with McKinley’s name beside it (2020 program). Chris Busa, a co-founder of Provincetown Arts and a member of the Board since the Society’s founding, had died that June. The Society’s published minutes do not include that meeting, and none of the sources consulted for this post connects the Busa award to the Graduate Writing Award or describes its terms.
In Works and Days
- Maggie McKinley — Literary scholar and critic, associate professor of English at Harper College, and a leading voice of the current generation of Mailer studies.
- Christopher Busa — Founding editor of Provincetown Arts, Mailer’s friend and neighbor, and a member of the Society’s Board from its founding.