The Tucson Festival of Books has announced the winners of the 2023 Literary Awards.
The Arizona Daily Star has teamed up with the Festival to share excerpts of the first-place entries in the three categories: poetry, fiction and non-fiction.
To learn more about the winners and to read the judges’ comments, visit tucne.ws/tfoblaw.
This year’s book fest is March 4-5 on the University of Arizona campus.
Poetry
First place: “A Fat Encyclopedia of Astounding Mistakes” and other poems by Valentina Gnup of Oakland, California
Czech Angels
I’d like to die listening to a piece of music.
—Robert Walser, Swiss writer
I always imagine it will be December when I die, perhaps I’ll be doing something I’ve done many times
like buttering toast for breakfast — or maybe I’ll die like Walser, walking in Christmas snow. Three years ago
when I visited Prague, I was drawn to the Czech angels, they were everywhere — flying in Renaissance paintings,carved from granite in overgrown cemeteries, wearing bronze wings in St. Vitus Cathedral. I took photos
of each one, as if they were my cousins or old friends.
I like to think when I die, those angels will remember —
they’ll gather my body and carry me to the angel hotel, where the bread is sweet, and the music, even sweeter.
Fiction
First place: “Body Memory” by Kathleen Furin of Philadelphia
“Body Memory”
Kerri padded out to her ancient minivan, wearing tattered pink flip-flops and wrinkled sweats. She turned the music up as she pulled away; she needed to be immersed in it, tucked into that space where past memory and future worry dissolved into a singular, silvered moment, vibrating like the bass furiously shaking her ancient vehicle. This vibration, this dis-assembling of herself, felt sometimes like the only thing that was getting her through. Dis-assembled she could get through anything. She could even admit how impatient she was for Matt to just hurry up and die already, anticipating the utter calm of his absence. But this space in the music was getting harder to find. Already, almost, she didn’t believe in it.
She parked at McDonald’s and threaded into a bathroom stall. She wriggled out of her sweats, fastened on her strapless bra. She slipped into her purple dress, shaking out her hair. She used to love how this dress felt swirling over her legs; now she couldn’t love anything. She stood at the mirror, applying triple layers of mascara and extra blush to hide the truth of who she really was, where her heart sat.
Earlier she’d sat with Squirrel, who’d been having trouble falling asleep lately. Kerri did that almost every night now, tucking Squirrel in then staying, tracing circles over her skinny shoulders. Kerri would sit until her fingers ached, wanting to run and at the same time never wanting to leave. She had a feeling the rest of her life was going to feel like this and this made her want to run harder, root her feet even more deeply into Squirrel’s plush rug. Dear Squirrel, with her round inquisitive eyes, her missing tooth that’d been knocked out by her brother. The new one hadn’t yet come in; the dentist simply saying give it time. Of course. You gave things time when you couldn’t give them money. The missing tooth made Squirrel look younger than her ten years while her height made her look older, the older age matching her reserved manner. Even now; she coped by practicing origami, folding everything she touched. She had a sweet tooth, and especially loved to fold candy wrappers into tiny creatures, which lay scattered everywhere, over her dresser and rug, even in her sheets.
They never said it out loud but Squirrel knew. Kerri knew Squirrel knew but still they said nothing. The boys stayed busy, stayed away, but Squirrel sat with her dad like always, reading his old comic books out loud. He had quite a collection, but their favorite was Spiderman. When she got tired of reading she’d put on a Spiderman movie. “He likes it, Mom,” she’d say, lifting a lank shoulder then drawing it down, a bat folding its wing. Matt slept through just about everything now. He’d barely lifted his head when they’d gathered with purple unicorn cupcakes to sing Happy Birthday to Squirrel just last week. Still Squirrel sat with him, laughing when she was supposed to, talking, even; hey, daddy, did you see that? Kerri wished sometimes for just a tiny bit of what Squirrel had. Lately she’d been in and out, brisk and efficient, doing what needed to be done then moving on.
Non-fiction
First place: “Sugaring: A Memoir” by Jen Parsons of Telluride, Colorado
“Sugaring: A Memoir”The day after my husband died, we sugared.
I was just thirty-nine and a widow. Thirty-nine and about to raise two children, one diapered and one barely out, alone.
“Last thing,” my husband, Trevor, said to me in our big, sweeping goodbye. “I want this family to sugar. It will bring you all together.”
So, we sugared. We tapped the family maple trees and waited for sap to run. What else are you going to do in Vermont in March, just a treefall away from the Canadian border? At the end of winter, to mark the start of spring, you tap your trees for sap and then boil it for hours, days, to make maple syrup. It is ritual.
When a good husband dies, and he asks you to, you sugar. We gathered the metal buckets from the cellar. Someone found the hand-drill. My children were dressed in their rugged snow clothes. They wore their mittens, but my son’s thumbs aimed the wrong way out. We climbed through the pasture and into the old growth on the hill above the house to find the stand of maples. Trevor claimed these as his when he sugared as a kid. A rusted evaporator knelt into the ground. If we were sugaring for any other purpose than to be together, we would have used a power drill. But that day we used a hand drill. It allowed us, for a moment, to not be stiff with death.
It’s a cliché about Vermont, but also true. What else are you going to do when your husband died the day before. When your kids look at you and you can’t decide who is more helpless — them or you. When the entire extended family comes to your husband’s childhood home to say farewell to his yellowed self, and the house is full of family and friends — the high school buddy who drove all night to get there, the old roommate from Colorado, the fraternity friends, the multitudes of cousins. What else are you going to do, eat the casseroles and the pies until you bloat? Stare at each other? What are you going to do? Cry?
We drilled with our gloved hands.
We hammered in taps.
We laughed. I think. The hand drill felt silly, and we ribbed each other when we cranked the swiveled arm of it. Kids rolled down the wood’s road with their cousins, the snow now thin with imminent spring. They made imperfect angels.
The sap would come from the tree, and we would collect it. We would tend a small fire beneath all this sap in a big boiling pan, it would take loads of sap, more than you’d ever think could be needed. We would make only a small bit of sweet syrup. We would watch it for scalding. We’d need to keep adding more. More sap and more fuel. More sap and more fuel to keep it going, to keep the appropriate balance in which it would distill but not be ruined. It would take great care when time came to boil.
In the sugar woods, the day after my husband died, I leaned on the tree. I watched all the family, together. A good family, full of love and despair, love and despair together, pressed as tight as leaves closed in a thick book. I knew already the love and despair could hold me. It could be mine, always. A deep, small seed sensed, however, it could also dissolve me. I could evaporate. I looked up the bare limbs of the tree and then down into the spout and the bucket, but nothing came out, yet. Just a hollow, empty thing.
The thing is: sugaring takes time.
