The American Nobel: Oklahoma's Neustadt Prize (2017)

I f I had been pressed on what I knew about the Neustadt Prize before going to Oklahoma in November, I probably would’ve said something along the lines that it’s the “American Nobel,” that the prize money is substantial, that it’s held at the University of Oklahoma because of World Literature Today, and that the first author ever published by Open Letter Books—Dubravka Ugrešić—was this year’s recipient. There’s a reason the Neustadt has been labeled as the “greatest literary prize you haven’t heard of,” though—all of which was on display in Norman, Oklahoma, in the week before Halloween. Founded in 1970 as the Books Abroad InternationalPrizeforLiterature(itassumed its much shorter moniker in 1976), the Neustadt is awarded every other year to a poet, novelist, or playwright from anywhere in the world on the basis of “literary merit” alone. On the off years, two things happen: the jury for the next prize releases the names of their finalists and chooses a winner, and the NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature —funded and administered by three Neustadt sisters, Nancy, Susan, and Kathy— is awarded and celebrated. From the best I can tell, the “American Nobel” nickname comes from the fact that over its forty-five-year history, thirty-two of the winners, jurors, and finalists have gone on to win the Nobel Prize, including Gabriel García Márquez (winner, 1972), Czesław Miłosz (winner, 1978), Tomas Tranströmer (winner, 1990), Mario Vargas Llosa (juror), Derek Walcott (juror), Doris Lessing (finalist ), and Svetlana Alexievich (finalist). That’s a pretty fantastic list of authors, and the actual prize—a $50,000 check and a very weighty feather made of silver, housed in a handcrafted wooden box—is equally impressive. But what most got to me was the care that went into making sure this award has a deep impact on readers and students. One of the reasons behind the two-year cycle for this award—announced one year, with the festival taking place in the ensuing one—is so that students can take a class on the winning author and participate in the festival itself. The idea of taking a “Neustadt Winner” class and being able to meet an internationally renowned author might not seem all that impressive to many of the people reading this, who live in metropolises and are part of the book industry, but for the people of Norman, a tiny little blue bubble in a redder than red state, this is a pretty powerful opportunity. As one would expect, a number of the festival events are pretty standard: an opening -night reception (which I spoke at, as the publisher of five books by Dubravka dating back thirteen years), a keynote address (“A Girl in Litland,” which appears in the current issue of World Literature Today), an insightful roundtable on her works, and a swank closing ceremony at the natural history museum where Dubravka was given her check and silver feather. But along the way, there were some interesting detours. A roundtable discussion about the European refugee crisis. (Although not a refugee per se, Dubravka has been living in exile ever since Yugoslavia split along nationalist lines and she became a “Croatian.”) A slapsticky, raucous staging of her short story “Who Am I?” by students from the University of Oklahoma School of Drama. And a chance for the students in the Neustadt class to apply all their book learning and interview the author in person. • Before going on, I want to take a moment to say that you should absolutely read Dubravka’s books. If this were a different sort of essay, I’d get all personal journal about our fifteen-year friendship, the first time I discovered her (in an interview in Bomb), about how much she’s meant 64 WLT JANUARY–FEBRUARY 2017 cover feature The American Nobel Oklahoma’s Neustadt Prize by Chad W. Post from left Ellen Elias-Bursać, Dubravka Ugrešić, and Chad Post photo : jen rickard blair to Open Letter (our one and only National Book Critics Circle Award finalist!), and the emotional reaction I had when I was referenced in her...