The San Juan Star Magazine
May 20, 1990
How Rea created a $25,000 short story prize
By Tom Blackburn
Cox News Service via New York Times News Service
Joyce Carol Oates, winner of the 1990 Rea Award for the Short Story, is better known than the prize she won, but its $25,000 stipend puts it in the stratosphere of American literary awards.
The award was created in 1986 by a part-time resident of Palm Beach, Fla., who describes himself as an “unpublished writer of short stories: and a collector of fist editions of books of short stories. Michael Rea talked about the award and about short stories by telephone from his home in Washington, Conn.
Rea, 63 said he is retired after running areal estate business in Pittsburgh and a group of radio stations. He and his wife run the family foundation, through which the short-story award is made. They keep an apartment on Palm Beach, where Rea began visiting with his family as a boy.
“I am wealthy,” he said, “but not extremely wealthy.”
Nevertheless, he presides over a $25,000 annual award. The Pulitzer Prize for fiction is worth $3,000; the Bancroft Prize for history, $4,000 and the National Book Awards and the Bollingen Prize for poetry, $10,000.
“When I put the price tag on it, there was nothing for short stories,” Rea said. “I thought if I’m going to do it, do it big . . . .
“We are talking about honoring the form as much as the writer,” Rea said. “Each year I tell the winner, ‘Don’t let those publishing houses talk you over into writing a novel.’”
Novels rake in the biggest profits. Joyce Carol Oates has written 20 of them, and poetry, criticism and plays, as well. She never abandoned short stories, though; she has published 10 collections.
“It unnerves other writers that Joyce is so prolific,” Rea said, “but her work is consistently of high quality, whatever the genre.”
The previous winners were Cynthia Ozick in 1986; Robert Coover, 1987; Donald Barthelme, 1988; and Tobias Wolff, 1989.
Rea doesn’t pick the m personally. He names three jurors each year. This year they were Frank Conroy, author and director of the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop; Daniel Halpern, poet and editor of Antaeus and the Ecco Press; and the 1989 honoree, Wolff. Each juror nominates two authors, and then they meet to thrash out a winner.
“I can’t get involved in the decision,” Rea said. “It’s not right. If I were going to do that, I might as well pick the person myself.”
Bt he said he enjoys listening to their discussions. And he gets a kick out of calling the winners to tell them of a $25,000 award for which they didn’t know they had been nominated.
The Rea Award honor writers who “made a significant contribution to the short story as an art form.” Rea said that judges spend a lot of time discussing whether a nominee is just an excellent writer or has made a “significant contriubtuion.”
The point is, he said, that the form is not static.
Rea’s foundation had made grants to universities for writing programs. The idea of increasing the visibility of short-story writers through awards came to him when he “suddenly realized that the form, which had been in remission as a sad, second cousin to the novel, was coming back.”
It’s widely agreed in publishing circles that he spotted a trend, that more and better short-story collections began appearing around 1986, when he started the award.
He attributes the revival to changes in the reading audience and to the influence of college writing programs on authors.
Readers, he said, are so busy and have so many alternatives for leasure that they are turning to the shorter forms of fiction. “Short stories are perfect to pick up and read on an airplane,” Rea said.
T the same time, writing programs, such as Frank Conroy’s in Iowa, encourage short-story writers. Rea said similar programs now turning up in high schools should keep his favorite form alive.
He knows the writing programs have been accused of making cookie-cutter authors, all writing alike, and he has seen evidence of that. But he said that problem is offset by the best of the new writing.
“There has been some very interesting writing that took off during the 1980s” as a result of these programs, he said. “You can get a flavor of what is going on in our society at the time from it.”
The Litchfield County Times
Litchfield, CT
April 20, 1990
Writer Receives Rea Award Set Up by Washington Man
The $25,000 Rea Award for the Short Story has been awarded to Joyce Carol Oates.
The Rea Award for the Short Story was established in 1986 to honor a writer who has made a significant contribution to the short story as an art form. It is given annually by the Dungannon Foundation to a living U.S. writer. The recipient is nominated and selected by a jury—the award cannot be applied for.
“Her many and versatile literary accomplishments notwithstanding, the winning of this award puts Joyce Carol Oates solidly in the camp of premier short fiction writers,” says Michael Rea, of Washington, president of the Dungannon Foundation.
Previous winners of the Rea Award for the Short Story are Cynthia Ozick (1986), Robert Coover (1987), Donald Barthelme (1988) and Tobias Wolff (1989). Jurors for the 1990 Rea Award for the Short Story were Frank Conroy, Director of the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, Daniel Halperin, editor of Antaeus and The Ecco Press and Tobias Wolff, writer-in-residence at Syracuse University.
In selecting this year’s winner, the jury gave the following citation: “One of the magical things about Joyce Carol Oates is her ability to constantly reinvent not only the psychological space she inhabits, but herself as well, as part of her fiction. She can. operate, as a writer, out of a combination of bewilderment and immediate, intuitive understanding—turning to fiction what impinges on her life, wherever she chooses to live it.”
Joyce Carol Oates is one of today’s most prolific writers. She is the author of 20 novels and many volumes of short stories, poems and essays, as well as plays. Her short stories have been included in the O. Henry Prize collections. She has received awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Institute of Arts and Letters and the 1970 National Book Award. She is a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.
“All of my writing,” Joyce Carol Oates once remarked, “is about the mystery of human emotions.” This is reflected in her short stories. Love and death are the central themes of the stories in A Sentimental Education. The twisted psyche provides the thread of the stories in Last Days. In Raven’s Wing, the stories deal with human evil.
John Updike’s comments about Joyce Carol Oates well sum up her achievements as a writer: “If the phrase ‘woman of letters’ existed, she would be, foremost in this country, entitled to it.”
Palm Beach Post
May 13, 1990
Short-story award a boost to art form
By Tom Blackburn
Palm Beach Post Books Editor
Joyce Carol Oates, winner of the 1990 Rea Award for the Short Story, is better known than the prize she won, but its $25,000 stipend puts it in the stratosphere of American literary awards.
The award was created in 1986 by a part-time resident of Palm Beach who describes himself as an “unpublished writer of short stories” and a collector of first editions of books of short stories.
Michael Rea talked about the award and about short stories by telephone from his home in Washington, Conn., after the April 30 announcement of Oates’ win.
Rea, 63, said he is retired after running a real estate business in Pittsburgh and a group of radio stations. He and his wife run the family foundation, through which the short-story award is made. They keep an apartment on Palm Beach, where Rea began visiting with his family as a boy.
“I am wealthy,” he said, “but not extremely wealthy.”
Nevertheless, he presides over a $25,000 annual award. For comparison, the Pulitzer Prize for fiction is worth $3,000; the Bancroft Prize for history, $4,000; and the National Book Awards and the Bollingen Prize for poetry, $10,000 .
“When I put the price tag on it, there was nothing for short stories,” Rea said. “I thought if I’m going to do it, do it big. . . .
“We are talking about honoring the form as much as the writer,” Rea said. “Each year I tell the winner, ‘Don’t let those publishing houses talk you over into writing a novel.’”
Novels rake in the biggest profits. Joyce Carol Oates has written 20 of them, and poetry, criticism and plays, as well. She never abandoned short stories, though; she has published 10 collections.
“It unnerves other writers that Joyce is so prolific,” Rea said, “but her work is consistently of high quality, whatever the genre.”
The previous winners were Cynthia Oziek in 1986; Robert Coover, 1987; Donald Barthelme, 1988; and Tobias Wolff, 1989.
Rea doesn’t pick them person ally. He names three jurors each year. This year they were Frank Conroy, author and director of the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop; Daniel Halpern, poet and editor of Antaeus and The Ecco Press; and the 1989 honoree, Wolff. Each juror nominates two authors, and then they meet to thrash out a winner.
“I can’t get involved in the decision,” Rea said. “It’s not right. If I were going to do that, I might as well pick the person myself.”
But he said he enjoys listening to their discussions. And he gets a kick out of calling the winners to tell them of a $25,000 award for which they didn’t know they had been nominated.
The Rea Award honors writers who “made a significant contribution to the short story as an art form.” Rea said the judges spend a lot of time discussing whether a nominee is just an excellent writer or has made a “significant contribution.”
The point is, he said, that the form is not static.
Rea’s foundation had made grants to universities for writing programs. The idea of increasing the visibility of short-story writers through awards came to him when he “suddenly realized that the form, which had been in remission as a sad, second cousin to the novel, was coming back.”
It’s widely agreed in publishing circles that he spotted a trend, that more and better short-story collections began appearing around 1986, when he started the award.
He attributes the revival to changes in the reading audience and to the influence of college writing programs on authors.
Readers, he said, are so busy and have so many alternatives for leisure that they are turning to the shorter forms of fiction. “Short stories are perfect to pick up and read on an airplane,” Rea said.
At the same time, writing programs, such as Frank Conroy’s in Iowa, encourage short-story writers. Rea said similar programs now turning up in high schools should keep his favorite form alive.
He knows the writing programs have been accused of making cookie-cutter authors, all writing alike; and he has seen evidence of that. But he said that problem is offset by the best of the new writing.
“There has been some very interesting writing that took off during the 1980s” as a result of these programs, he said. “You can get a flavor of what is going on in our society at the time from it.”