August 16, 2024
by Kathleen Driskell, Chair, Sena Jeter Naslund-Karen Mann Graduate School of Writing, Spalding University
Solito: A Memoir is the Fall 2024 Naslund-Mann Residency Book in Common.
author photo by Gerardo de Valle
I am delighted to announce that the 2024 Spalding Prize for the Promotion of Peace and Justice in Literature is awarded to Javier Zamora for his award-winning, best-selling memoir Solito, published by Hogarth in 2022.
The Spalding Prize was established by the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing to honor a work of literature that exemplifies the mission of Spalding University and our community’s core commitment to compassion. The Prize includes a cash award of $7,500 and an invitation to the winner to visit our residency as distinguished visiting writer. Past winners of the Spalding Prize include Kevin Willmott for the screenplay for BlacKKKlansman, co-written with Spike Lee; Kiki Petrosino for her poetry collection White Blood; A Lyric of Virginia; Randy Ribay for his YA novel Patron Saints of Nothing; and Honorée Fanonne Jeffers for her novelThe Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois.
Solito: A Memoir, which also serves as our Fall 2024 residency book in common, is a book that meets the needs of our times, full of beautiful writing and moving narration. I’m excited for our Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing students, alumni, and faculty to open Solito and begin reading this story that has been called both harrowing and hopeful. Jose Antonio Vargas says “Zamora has elevated ‘the child migrant story’ to new literary heights.” And I look forward to discussing Solito with everyone at our Fall 2024 residency, November 9-16 on Spalding’s campus.
School of Writing students can listen to an interview between Javier Zamora and NPR’s Rachel Martin here.
At 6:00 p.m. Tuesday, November 12, our distinguished visiting writer Mr. Zamora visits the Naslund-Mann residency to discuss his work with our literary community. His talk will be presented at the Louisville Free Public Library’s Main Campus on York Street. The public is cordially invited to attend this presentation, a partnership between Spalding University and the Louisville Free Public Library. A book-signing will follow with books provided by our Naslund-Mann partner Carmichael’s Bookstore. Free parking is available to the public.
The next morning, Mr. Zamora will attend a Q & A session open only to Naslund-Mann students, faculty, and alumni.
Penguin Random House writes “Narrated by his nine-year-old self, Zamora’s memoir, Solito, provides an intimate account of his near-impossible journey and the unexpected moments of kindness, love, and joy scattered across perilous boat trips, desert treks, arrests, and betrayals. Longlisted for the PEN America 2023 Literary Awards, Solito was a New York Times bestseller and a 2023 American Book Award winner.
Until recently, Zamora only had a temporary protected status, and was neither a citizen nor a permanent resident of the United States, making him ineligible for many poetry award submissions. Despite his talent, grades, and body of work, he found himself largely excluded from career-making prizes, contests, and fellowships because of his status.
Javier Zamora has been a Stegner fellow at Stanford University and a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard and holds fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation. Zamora has also been granted fellowships from CantoMundo, Colgate University, the Lannan Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, Macondo, and Yaddo. HIs debut poetry collection, Unaccompanied, is rooted in the indelible experiences of a nine-year-old boy navigating politics, racism, war, and the impact of a border crossing on his family.
Zamora holds a BA from the University of California, Berkeley, and has earned an MFA from New York University. The recipient of the 2017 Narrative Prize, the 2016 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award, and the 2020 Pushcart Prize, Zamora has been published in Granta, the Kenyon Review, American Poetry, the New Republic, the New York Times, and Poetry, among other publications. Javier Zamora lives in Tucson, Arizona.
As creative nonfiction is our featured genre for residency this fall, each student and faculty member reads Solito; A Memoir in advance of residency to prepare for our book-in-common discussion and Mr. Zamora’s presentations to our community. Students should place Solito in the bibliographies of their Student Career Curriculum Vitae.
Faculty Books and Scripts in Common for Fall 2024
In addition to reading our residency book in common, all students should read the Faculty Book or Script in Common in the workshop area of their Fall 2024 residency to prepare for the virtual discussion that will take place 3:00 – 4:00 pm Eastern, Sunday, October 20, just after your virtual introductory workshop session with your faculty leader. Zoom meeting links will be posted in the Thursday Memo the week before our discussions.
The Faculty Books and Scripts in Common for this fall’s residency are
Fiction: Rachel Harper’s The Other Mother
Poetry: Lynnell Edwards’s The Bearable Slant of Light
Creative Nonfiction: Nancy McCabe’s Can This Marriage Be Saved?
Writing for Children/YA: Ellen Hagan's All that Shines
Screenwriting: TBA.
Playwriting: TBA.
Students, I hope you enjoy reading and thinking about Solito as much as I have, as well as the faculty books and scripts in common in your residency area. We’re busily planning a wonderfully enriching Fall 2024 residency for you and are looking forward to being with you soon!
Award-winning poet, essayist, and teacher Kathleen Driskell, chair of The Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing and Professor of Creative Writing at Spalding University, is the author of six poetry collections, including Goat-Footed Gods, forthcoming March 2025 from Carnegie Mellon University Press. Her other collections include Blue Etiquette: Poems, a finalist for the Weatherford Award; Next Door to the Dead, a Kentucky Voices selection by the University Press of Kentucky and winner of the 2018 Judy Gaines Young Book Award; and Seed Across Snow, a Poetry Foundation national bestseller. Her individual poems and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Rattle, River Teeth, Appalachian Review, The Southern Review, Shenandoah, North American Review, and others, and have been featured in anthologies and online at Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and American Life in Poetry. From 2019-22, she served as chair of the board of directors of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, the largest professional organization of creative writers in the US. Driskell received her MFA in creative writing from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Spalding University’s Mission Statement:
Spalding University is a diverse community of learners dedicated to meeting the needs of the times in the tradition of the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth through quality undergraduate and graduate liberal and professional studies, grounded in spiritual values, with emphasis on service and the promotion of peace and justice.