Truman Capote Literary Trust

Last updated

The Truman Capote Literary Trust is an American charitable trust established in 1994 by Truman Capote's literary executor, Alan U. Schwartz, [1] pursuant to Capote's will. [2]

Contents

Origin

Truman Capote died in 1984 and his will established a lifetime annuity for his companion, Jack Dunphy. The will stated that, on Dunphy's death, a literary trust be created that would be sustained by the royalties from Capote's books. According to Truman Capote's will the proceeds of the Trust fund a prize for the best book of literary criticism in honor of Newton Arvin, former professor at Smith College, with any other funds to support scholarships for creative writing. Dunphy died in 1992, and the trust was established in 1994.

The trust is located in Los Angeles.

Awards

For critics

In cooperation with the Iowa Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa, the Trust awards the annual Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism in Memory of Newton Arvin, commemorating not only Capote but also his friend Newton Arvin, the Smith College professor and critic, distinguished professor of American literature, who lost his job after his homosexuality was exposed. The prize is worth $30,000.

The Trust also established a lifetime achievement award, worth $100,000, and administered through the Stanford University Creative Writing Program. It was awarded to Alfred Kazin (1996) [3] and George Steiner (1998). [4]

For students

The Trust awards scholarships and fellowships for creative writing at universities such as Cornell University, the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, the University of Montana, Xavier of Louisiana, the Institute of American Indian Arts, and Brooklyn College, among others.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Truman Capote</span> American author (1924–1984)

Truman Garcia Capote was an American novelist, screenwriter, playwright, and actor. Several of his short stories, novels, and plays have been praised as literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958) and the true crime novel In Cold Blood (1966). His works have been adapted into more than 20 films and television productions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William H. Gass</span> American fiction writer, critic, philosophy professor (1924–2017)

William Howard Gass was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, critic, and philosophy professor. He wrote three novels, three collections of short stories, a collection of novellas, and seven volumes of essays, three of which won National Book Critics Circle Award prizes and one of which, A Temple of Texts (2006), won the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism. His 1995 novel The Tunnel received the American Book Award. His 2013 novel Middle C won the 2015 William Dean Howells Medal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Iowa Writers' Workshop</span> MFA degree granting program

The Iowa Writers' Workshop, at the University of Iowa, is a graduate-level creative writing program. At 87 years, it is the oldest writing program offering a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in the United States. Its acceptance rate is between 2.7% and 3.7%. On the university's behalf, the workshop administers the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism and the Iowa Short Fiction Award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Steiner</span> Writer, literary critic and philosopher (1929–2020)

Francis George Steiner, FBA was a Franco-American literary critic, essayist, philosopher, novelist and educator. He wrote extensively about the relationship between language, literature and society, as well as the impact of the Holocaust. A 2001 article in The Guardian described Steiner as a "polyglot and polymath".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jane Smiley</span> American novelist (born 1949)

Jane Smiley is an American novelist. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992 for her novel A Thousand Acres (1991).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marina Warner</span> English novelist, short story writer, historian and mythographer

Dame Marina Sarah Warner, is an English historian, mythographer, art critic, novelist and short story writer. She is known for her many non-fiction books relating to feminism and myth. She has written for many publications, including The London Review of Books, the New Statesman, Sunday Times and Vogue. She has been a visiting professor, given lectures and taught on the faculties of many universities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Newton Arvin</span> American literary critic and academic

Fredrick Newton Arvin was an American literary critic and academic. He achieved national recognition for his studies of individual nineteenth-century American authors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alfred Kazin</span> American writer and literary critic

Alfred Kazin was an American writer and literary critic. His literary reviews appeared in The New York Times, the New York Herald-Tribune, The New Republic and The New Yorker. He wrote often about the immigrant experience in early twentieth-century America. His trilogy of memoirs, A Walker in the City (1951), Starting Out in the Thirties (1965) and New York Jew (1978), were all finalists for the National Book Award for Nonfiction.

Edilberto Kaindong Tiempo was a Filipino writer and professor. He and his wife, Edith L. Tiempo, are credited by Silliman University with establishing "a tradition in excellence in creative writing and the teaching of literacy craft which continues to this day" at that university.

The Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism is awarded for literary criticism by the University of Iowa on behalf of the Truman Capote Literary Trust. The value of the award is $30,000 (USD), and is said to be the largest annual cash prize for literary criticism in the English language. The formal name of the prize is the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism in Memory of Newton Arvin, commemorating both Capote and his friend Newton Arvin, who was a distinguished critic and Smith College professor until he lost his job in 1960 after his homosexuality was publicly exposed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stanley Plumly</span> American poet (1939-2019)

Stanley Plumly was an American poet and the director of University of Maryland, College Park's creative writing program.

Dame Gillian Patricia Kempster Beer, is a British literary critic and academic. She was President of Clare Hall from 1994 to 2001, and King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at the University of Cambridge from 1994 to 2002.

Mark McGurl is an American literary critic specializing in 20th-century American literature. He is the Albert L. Guérard Professor of Literature at Stanford University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andrew J. Porter</span> American short story writer

Andrew J. Porter is an American short story writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ann Packer (author)</span> American novelist and short story writer (born 1959)

Ann Packer is an American novelist and short story writer. She is the recipient of a James Michener Award and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship.

Seth Lerer is an American scholar and Professor of English. He specializes in historical analyses of the English language, and in addition to critical analyses of the works of several authors, particularly Geoffrey Chaucer. He is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Literature at the University of California, San Diego, where he served as the Dean of Arts and Humanities from 2009 to 2014. He previously held the Avalon Foundation Professorship in Humanities at Stanford University. Lerer won the 2010 Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism and the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism for Children’s Literature: A Readers’ History from Aesop to Harry Potter.

"A Diamond Guitar" is a short story by Truman Capote, first published in Harper's Bazaar in 1950; it is noted as one of his better quality early short stories. The title refers to the prize possession of the younger man, a rhinestone-studded guitar; the guitar serves as the key image of the story.

Philip Fisher is the Felice Crowl Reid Professor of English and American Literature at Harvard University and an author.

Novuyo Rosa Tshuma is a Zimbabwe-born writer and professor of creative writing. She is the author of Shadows, a novella and House of Stone, a novel.

Heather Clark is an American writer, literary critic and academic. Her biography of poet Sylvia Plath, Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath, was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize. She is also the author of The Grief of Influence: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes (2011) and The Ulster Renaissance: Poetry in Belfast 1962–1972 (2006).

References

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.