2010 PORTER FUND PRIZE WINNER ANNOUNCED

Fayetteville playwright and novelist Bob Ford is the recipient of the 2010 Porter Fund Literary Prize. The Porter Fund Literary Prize is presented annually to an Arkansas writer who has accomplished a substantial and impressive body of work that merits enhanced recognition. The $2000 prize makes it one of the states most lucrative as well as prestigious literary awards. Eligibility requires an Arkansas connection.

Ford will be honored at the award ceremony at 7 p.m. Saturday, April 10 at the Main Library's Darragh Center. The Porter Prize and the Booker Worthen Literary Prize will be given out in the same evening. The event, called a A Prized Evening and part of the Arkansas Literary Festival, is free and open to the public.

“This is an honor, but really more importantly, it's a slap on the back of huge proportions -- a reminder that you're not alone banging away at your computer,” said Ford upon learning of his recognition.
“To be noticed by writers you've long admired, it doesn't get any better than that. And to see a chain looping back in time to a great inspiration like Ben Kimpel, and be invited to join that chain, that's worth more than anything. That's recognition enough. I deeply appreciate this prize.”

The Porter Fund prize was founded in 1984 by novelist Jack Butler and novelist and lawyer Phil McMath to honor Dr. Ben Kimpel. Kimpel was noted professor of English at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. The prize is named in honor of Kimpel's mother, Gladys Crane Kimpel Porter. The annual prize, $2,000, has been given to 25 poets, novelists, non-fiction writers and a playwright. Roy Reed was the winner of the 2009 Porter Fund prize. In 2009 poet Miller Williams was given the second Lifetime Achievement Award in a gala at the Arkansas Governor's Mansion. The Lifetime Achievement Award will be given out by the Porter Fund every five years.

Ford is a playwright and novelist, and the Artistic Director of TheatreSquared in Fayetteville, where he also directs the Arkansas Playwrights' Workshop and is on the University of Arkansas drama faculty. His work has appeared in New York and at major regional theatres around the country. In April 2010 the Alabama Shakespeare Festival will premiere his play The Fall of the House; 2009 saw the premiere of 'Twas the Night by TheatreSquared, a reading of My Father’s War at New York Theatre Workshop and productions of the same play in Germany and Italy (in Italian translation), and staged readings of a brand new work, Look Away, at both TheatreSquared and Alabama Shakespeare Festival. Mr. Ford’s first play, Tierra del Fuego, won the prestigious Stanley Drama Award for Best New American Play; he has been a finalist for several other awards and has received fellowships from the Arkansas Arts Council, the Heekin Group Foundation, and the Michener Center for Writers. Mr. Ford's novel, The Student Conductor (G. P. Putnam's Sons), won two awards from the Texas Institute of Letters, was named among the top ten first novels of 2003 by both Booklist and Library Journal, was a Barnes & Noble "Discover Great New Writers" selection and a "Hidden Gem" on NPR, and received major coverage in the New York Times. Ford holds a Master of Music from Yale, an MFA in Acting from Rutgers, and an MFA in Playwriting and Screenwriting from the Michener Center for Writers, University of Texas at Austin. He has lived in Fayetteville since 1997 with his wife, actor/director Amy Herzberg.