It may sound hard to believe, but one of the most notable literary events in the nation recently took place at the University of Oklahoma in Norman. I attended this conference, at which nine authors from around the world met as the jury to select next year’s winner of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature. Oklahoma, not often considered a hub of cultural activity, proved it could offer one of the greatest literary, and life, experiences I have found anywhere.
First, some background to the conference: World Literature Today, an illustrious international journal published by the University of Oklahoma, awards the biennial Neustadt International Prize for Literature, which is considered second in prestige to the Nobel Prize.
The WLT web site notes, “It is the first international literary award of this scope to originate in the United States and is one of the very few international prizes for which poets, novelists, and playwrights are equally eligible.” In the past 38 years, 26 Neustadt laureates, candidates and jurors have gone on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.
A MacArthur Genius grant, a New York Times Best Book of the Year, Caméra d’Or at Cannes, and a New York Magazine Best Book of the Year — these are just some of the accolades that have been accumulated by the nine authors with whom I was able to talk at the conference. This year’s jury was comprised of: Sefi Atta (Nigeria), Horacio Castellanos Moya (El Salvador), Aleksandar Hemon (Bosnia), Etgar Keret (Israel), Joanne Leedom-Ackerman (USA), Mai Mang (China), Claire Messud (Canada), Pireeni Sundaralingam (Sri Lanka), and Niloufar Talebi (Iran).
In addition to their electoral duties of nominating and voting on the 2010 Neustadt laureate, the authors also participated in public lectures and private dinners over the course of the three-day Neustadt Conference. As a student in the Neustadt class, I spent hours talking with them, and actually got to know them, not only as great artists, but also as interesting and fun people.
It is hard to capture in words the vibrancy of the event, the way the authors came alive in interactions with each other and the students, and when presenting their work in readings and performances. For my class, I had read representative books of all of the authors, but getting to meet the creators of these stunning works of art allowed me to experience them in new ways.
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