Sherman Alexie, 2009 Mason Award Winner

Fall for the Book will present this year’s Mason Award to novelist, poet. and filmmaker Sherman Alexie, whose works explore the American Indian experience and whom The New Yorker called one of the 20 top writers for the 21st century.

Alexie will accept the award on Tuesday, Sept. 22, at 7:30 p.m., in the Concert Hall, Center for the Arts, on George Mason University’s Fairfax, Va., Campus.

Alexie’s fiction includes The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (the basis for the award-winning film Smoke Signals, which he wrote and produced), Reservation Blues (winner of Booklist’s Editors Choice Award for Fiction), Indian Killer, The Toughest Indian in the World (winner of the PEN/Malamud Award), Ten Little Indians, and Flight. Alexie is also the author of several books of poetry, most recently Face. In 2002 he made his directorial debut with the film The Business of Fancydancing, which also is based on one of his books.

 Most recently, Alexie is the author of the National Book Award-winning young adult novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, His other awards include an O. Henry Prize for his short fiction and a Shelley Memorial Award for his poetry. The New York Times Book Review hailed him as “one of the major lyric voices of our time.”

 Alexie is the fourth winner of the Mason Award, created by Fall for the Book to celebrate an author whose body of work has made extraordinary contributions to bringing literature to a wide reading public. The award has previously been presented to Dave Eggers, Jonathan Lethem, and Chinua Achebe.  

Also added to this year’s program:

• Jessica Anthony, with her debut novel, The Convalescent
• Scott Cairns, author of  the spiritual memoir, Short Trip to the Edge, and of Love’s Immensity: Mystics on the Endless Life
• Michael Sims, editor of The Penguin Book of Gaslight Crime: Con Artists, Burglars, Rogues, and Scoundrels From the Time of Sherlock Holmes
• Jayanti Tamm, author of  Cartwheels in Sari: A Memoir of Growing Up Cult
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