Congratulations, Adrian Van Young!

All of us at Black Lawrence Press are thrilled to announce that Adrian Van Young has won the 2011 St. Lawrence Book Award for his collection of short stories, The Man Who Noticed Everything.
Adrian Van Young teaches creative and expository writing and literature at the Buckingham, Browne and Nichols School, Boston College and Grub Street, a creative writing non-profit. He formerly taught at Columbia University, where he received his MFA in fiction in 2010. In 2008, he was the recipient of a Henfield Foundation Prize and was nominated for inclusion in the Best New American Voices 2010 Anthology. He is currently in the midst of writing a historical novel based on the life of William H. Mumler, the father of spirit photography, and his clairvoyant wife, Hannah Mumler. His fiction and non-fiction have been published or are forthcoming in Lumina, Gigantic, Lacuna and The Believer. He lives in Somerville, MA with his wife.
Adrian Van Young is not the only St. Lawrence Book Award finalist to receive a contract. We are also very pleased to report that we will be publishing Like Oysters Observing the Sun, a poetry collection by Brenda Sieczkowski.
Brenda Sieczkowski is completing (at a snail’s pace) her PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Utah while taking time off from academia to work with homeless and at-risk youth.  Her poems and lyric essays have appeared widely in print and online journals, including The Colorado Review, Versal, The New England Review, Diagram, The Florida Review, Gulf Coast, Poet Lore, Sidebrow, and Subtropics among others. Her chapbook, Wonder Girl in Monster Land, is forthcoming from dancing girl press in the fall of 2011. Currently, she lives, works, and writes in Omaha, Nebraska.
Complete lists of the 2011 St. Lawrence book Award finalists and semi-finalists can be found in this earlier post. Thanks to everyone who participated!