Ohio State's Lee Martin is a Pulitzer finalist
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On the April day when Pulitzer prize winners were announced, Lee Martin was working with graduate students.
It wasn't until evening that Martin, director of Ohio State's Creative Writing Program, found out his second novel, The Bright Forever, had been selected as a Pulitzer finalist.
The award winners and finalists were announced while Martin was in class; he returned to his office to several congratulatory e-mails and phone calls.
"Until that point, I had no idea that the book had even been submitted," he said.
Each year, a committee of respected writers and editors wades through more than 2,000 entries to select 21 Pulitzer winners, including a single novel from a list of three finalists. (Geraldine Brooks' March won this year's award; E.L. Doctorow's The March was the other finalist.)
"I feel like I've won," Martin said. "I've never been so happy to lose something in my life."
The Bright Forever, Martin's fifth book and second novel, tells the story of Katie Mackey, a 9-year-old who disappears one summer night after leaving home to return some library books.
"The story of the missing girl is so prevalent in our culture," Martin said.
Martin's setting is close to home: He grew up in Sumner, Illinois, a rural town not far from the fictional Tower Hill, Indiana.
"Where I grew up made me very aware of the sort of relationships that exist in small towns in the Midwest," Martin said.
In The Bright Forever, he explores how an entire town--full of trusting adults who have known their friends and neighbors since childhood; people who rarely lock their doors--would react to "the first really heinous crime that took place in a community like that."
In being recognized by the Pulitzer committee, Martin joins a colleague, Professor Andrew Hudgins, whose collection of poetry, Saints and Strangers, was a Pulitzer finalist in 1986.
"Writers on our faculty have won all sorts of awards," Martin said.
"I hope it means further national recognition for what we do here," he said, of his novel's finalist status. "I hope that when people start thinking about what MFA program to apply to, they think about Ohio State's."
"For me, it means I've got to go write another book."
Related links:
The Journal, Ohio State's literary journal.
The Pulitzer Prize (off site)
(text/images: University Marketing Communications)
Also by Lee Martin:
- The Least You Need to Know, a 1996 collection of seven short stories.
- From Our House, a 2000 memoir about Martin's relationship with his father.
- Turning Bones, a 2001 memoir in which Martin traces his ancestors' lives and reminisces about his own.
- Quakertown, a 2001 novel about racial tension in Texas in the 1920s.
