What was it like to win the Sherwood Anderson Foundation grant?
Did it bring you some new opportunities? RGM: Winning the Anderson Award has been one of the real highlights of my writing life. It paid some real money for one thing. It’s nice to be paid. You feel like: wow, somebody likes my work enough to actually pay me for it. Oh, I’d earned a bit here and there before but that was the nicest chunk I’d ever gotten at once. Don’t get me wrong – it wasn’t enough to quit working or anything and it’s long gone now. More than anything, it was a tremendous boost to the writing morale, and it came at a time when I was starting to feel a little gloomy about my prospects in life. A writer needs a little energizing jolt now and then. The winning of the award really got me in gear to finish Episode because my entries for that contest were all contained in the work-in-progress. So, yes, it was a very meaningful award for me. I suspect that it will help bring more opportunities in the future. For instance, when I won a Pushcart Prize many years ago, that had
