user: Write an article with the title: "The Folio Prize is coming, and it may just help American literature"


assistant: One of the most common criticisms of a literary prize is that it is prejudiced. The Nobel Prize is said to be prejudiced against America, the Booker has been accused of dismissing "genre fiction" and the National Book Awards allegedly disdain the mainstream. While many prizes have taken strides towards rectifying their reputations, there is a lack of faith among readers in an award’s ability to promote writing upon merit alone, without geographical or figurative borders. The Folio Prize is the latest prize to make this its aim, and it’s an aim that Toby Hartwell, managing director of the Folio Society, told Page Views that the prize is serious about achieving.

“It’ll be the first award of its kind,” Hartwell said, “a level playing field.”

The prize, he assured, was driven by the belief that “great fiction shouldn’t have boundaries” — and a glimpse at the prize’s constitution shows that this is more than just press-release rhetoric.

The rules of entry, for example, are unprecedented in their openness: The Folio Prize is open to any work of fiction published in the U.K, regardless of the author’s country of origin. This immediately makes the prize more open than most of its rivals; the National Book Awards require U.S citizenship, while the Booker requires the author to be a citizen of the British Commonwealth. In fact, the National Book Critics Circle Award is one of the only major literary honors to boast a similarly expansive attitude towards its nominations. Though, while it only requires a work to be published in the U.S, seven of its last ten winners for fiction have been American.

Apart from their novelty, The Folio Prize’s rules of entry could produce some mouth-watering hypothetical contests: If Hilary Mantel releases something the same year as Thomas Pynchon, who would take home the prize? Would Junot Diaz’s latest be a match for the new Zadie Smith? The mind boggles.

The Folio Prize Academy, which will nominate the books for the prize, should also please readers with a thirst for open-minded awards.

"The idea was to remove any trace of elitism, by making sure our academy was not only made up of great writers, but also great readers," Hartwell explained.

A judging panel of five — with no more than three UK representatives and three of the same gender — will be chosen from the group of writers and critics that make up the Academy.

Certainly, with such Academy members as Rahul Battacharya, Nam Le, J.M.Coetzee and Chloe Aridjis, the Folio prize can boast a diversity that other prizes seldom have been able to. Furthermore, it is an Academy that knows no genre: Margaret Atwood, Michael Chabon, David Mitchell and China Mieville are all members, and are all writers with a speculative style often thought to be overlooked by major prizes. As Hartwell told us, with evident relish, “the winner could be an ebook, or a graphic novel. We hope that our Academy will help to uncover a new writer, or even a whole new genre!”

Another notable element of the Academy is the strong representation of American writers and critics. Those who have criticized international prizes for being too euro-centric in the past will be relieved to see the likes Bret Easton Ellis, Junot Diaz and Paris Review editor Lorin Stein among the Academy, and possible judging panel. Of course, the U.K-based Folio Prize is using its connections with the publishing world across the Atlantic as a means of standing out among literary honors — but it could be argued that contemporary American literature needs the prize just as much.

One of the criticisms leveled at recent American literature is that it is too parochial. Indeed, permanent secretary of the Nobel Academy Horace Engdahl caused a stir with his remarks on the subject in 2008: “The U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature. That ignorance is restraining.” Meanwhile, Alexander Nazaryan — of this parish — asked in Salon: “What relevance does our solipsism have to a reader in Bombay? For that matter, what relevance does it have in Brooklyn, N.Y.?” If we consider these points to be fair — and a debate has long raged on the subject — then another internationally recognized prize, with a strong American backbone and a universalizing ethos, could serve to make American literature “relevant” to readers overseas.

With “Twilight” going one way across the Atlantic and “50 Shades” coming back the other, the literary conversation between the U.S. and the rest of the world has too often been a commercial one; an award like the Folio Prize might elevate it to a critical level. This could result in the weakening of the self-absorption that some say has been holding American writing back.

Of course, no prize is immune from criticism, and there will be much further discussion before the inaugural prize ceremony next March. It does, however, offer a fresh approach to the literary prize, and one that could potentially benefit the state of American letters. Besides, as Hartwell put it, any new prize should be seen as a good thing: “We never gave much thought as to whether the world needed a new literary prize. Our feeling is that any award that would put good writing back in the center of people’s lives is a good thing.” Quite.