Author Jane Smiley has won The Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Prize for Fiction for her book Golden Age.
The award is given to works that “reinforce and perpetuate the values of heartland America.” This is the second time that Smiley has won the award. She earned the honor for A Thousand Acres in 1991.
Golden Age is the third book in Smiley’s Last Hundred Years trilogy, the story of an Iowa farm family that evolves across generations that began with Some Luck and was followed Early Warning. The Chicago Tribune has the scoop:
“Golden Age,” like the novels that preceded it, is deeply connected to how historic events play out, and how they reverberate over time. Smiley’s brilliant, omniscient narrator channels the anxieties, rage, frustration and resignation of a wide cast of characters, through the attacks of 9/11, and the subsequent economic meltdown, and the result is that the experience feels like life itself — intimate and routine, panoramic and significant.
Smiley will receive the award at a ceremony at the First United Methodist Church at the Chicago Temple on Nov. 12 at 10am.