Emory Prof Wins Georgia Author Award

An professor was recently named the Georgia Author of the Year for Fiction by the Georgia Writers Association for a novel that brings readers through the early 20th century and into the Warsaw Ghetto of 1940.

Joseph Skibell, associate professor of Creative Writing and English, won the award for his novel, A Curable Romantic, which was published in September 2010 by Algonquin Books. Skibell also won the $25,000 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature Choice Award earlier this year.

"A Curable Romantic is equal parts intelligent and witty: a macaronic, picaresque novel that is fabulous in every sense of the word," Georgia Writers Association judge Brian Corrigan said. "This is not only the best book of this year's group, it is simply among the best books I've read in the past several years."

More about the book and award, courtesy of Emory University:

The novel begins in 1895 Vienna, where the young hero, Dr. Jakob Josef Sammelsohn, befriends Sigmund Freud and ends in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1940. Skibell's protagonist wanders optimistically through the early 20th century, haunted by the amorous ghost of his young wife.

O Magazine calls A Curable Romantic "an irresistible romp." "This is a brave novel," writes Tony Bailie in the New York Journal of Books, "unafraid to undertake big themes and idea...hugely accomplished."

Fiction writer, playwright, and screenwriter, Joseph Skibell is the recipient of a Halls Fellowship, a Michener Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. His first novel, A Blessing on the Moon, was awarded the Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Turner Prize for First Fiction from the Texas Institute of Liberal Arts; and his second novel, The English Disease, received the Jesse H. Jones Award from the Texas Institute of Letters. Skibell is also the author of the play Our Own Dear Anton's Abandoned Story Cycle, which premiered in 2001, as well as many short stories and essays that have appeared in Story,Tikkun, the New York Times and Poets & Writers.