There might be something in water on the second floor of Colson Hall. Jim Harms had two books out in one month (Comet Scar and What to Borrow, What to Steal ) and he was named Chair of the English Department.. Mary Ann Samyn won the Benedum Distinguished Scholar Award (the highest honor a WVU Faculty member can receive for research) and the 2012 FIELD Poetry Prize for her collection My Life in Heaven. And now, Mark Brazaitis, fresh off of his recent win of the 2012 Richard Sullivan Prize in Short Fiction for his collection The Incurables, has just won the 8th Annual Gival Press Novel Award for his novel Julia & Rodrigo. Besides a nice cash prize, Mark’s novel will also be published in 2013 by Gival Press.

Thaddeus Rutkowski, the final judge of the contest and the author of Haywire, Tetched, and Roughhouse had this to say about Julia & Rodrigo: “This expressive, touching and at times wrenching novel tells the stories of two young people living in Guatemala during that country’s civil war. Teenagers Julia García and Rodrigo Rax meet at a school pageant and find that they are drawn to each other. Julia, the daughter of an engineer, lives in one of the few two-story houses in town. Rodrigo, who comes from less privilege, is a soccer star. But what begins as a love story soon becomes a struggle against circumstance. Julia and Rodrigo rise above old-fashioned customs of marriage and religious worship only to collide with events they cannot control. Ultimately, this finely crafted novel goes a long way toward answering the question of whether human free will can overcome fate, or God’s will.”

To top off the good news, Notre Dame Press just released The Incurables. Congratulations, Mark! As for me, I’m going to go read The Incurables and get a nice, long drink from that second floor drinking fountain.