THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, October 3, 1996 TAG: 9610030389
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: STAFF AND WIRE REPORT
LENGTH: 63 lines
Janet Peery, who teaches creative writing at Old Dominion University, was nominated Wednesday for a 1996 National Book Award for her first novel, ``The River Beyond the World.''
Peery's novel, set in the Texas/Mexico border country, was one of five fiction books nominated for the prestigious award.
The awards carry $10,000 prizes for the winners and $1,000 for the other nominees. The winners will be named Nov. 6.
Peery said she was ``astonished and happy'' at being nominated, adding: ``And if nothing else comes of it, that's all right.''
The nomination meets the second of two targets Peery first aimed for more than a decade ago.
``When I started writing when I was about 39, I set two goals,'' she said. ``I wanted to have something published by the time I was 40, and I wanted to be nominated for a National Book Award by the time I was 50. And I just made it.''
That sort of gives away her age, but, Peery said, ``I don't care! It's the most wonderful thing that could have happened at this stage of my career. And I'm in extraordinary company.''
Peery moved to Hampton Roads in 1993 with her three daughters to accept a one-year appointment as a visiting assistant professor at Old Dominion University.
Her highly praised volume of short stories, ``Alligator Dance,'' came out that year and won the Whiting Foundation Writers Award and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Rosenthal Foundation Award.
Three years later, Peery is a full-time ODU faculty member in creative writing.
In a review of Peery's novel for The Virginian-Pilot, Bill Ruehlmann called it ``a skillfully plaited story of two lives that come together in an ultimately redemptive, if mercurially devastating, relationship.''
The novel, which spans more than 50 years and is told in alternating voices, focuses on two characters: a poor, pregnant Mexican woman and the wealthy but unhappy housewife who hires her as a maid in the Texas border community of Rio Paradiso.
The other fiction nominees are ``Atticus,'' by Ron Hansen; ``Ship Fever and Other Stories,'' by Andrea Barrett; ``The Giant's House,'' by Elizabeth McCracken; and ``Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer,'' by Steven Millhauser.
Among the nonfiction nominees are ``An American Requiem: God, My Father, and the War That Came Between Us,'' by James Carroll, and ``The Living and the Dead: Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost War,'' by Paul Hendrickson.
The nominees in other categories:
Young People's Literature - ``What Jamie Saw,'' by Carolyn Coman; ``A Girl Named Disaster,'' by Nancy Farmer; ``The Long Season of Rain,'' by Helen Kim; ``Parrot in the Oven: Mi Vida,'' by Victor Martinez; and ``Send Me Down a Miracle,'' by Han Nolan.
Poetry - ``Scrambled Eggs & Whiskey: Poems 1991-1995,'' by Hayden Carruth; ``The Terrible Stories,'' by Lucille Clifton; ``Sun Under Wood,'' by Robert Hass; ``The Crack in Everything,'' by Alicia Suskin Ostriker; and ``Walking the Black Cat,'' by Charles Simic. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Janet Peery said she's ``astonished and happy'' that ``The River
Beyond the World'' was nominated.
KEYWORDS: WRITERS PROFILE by CNB