Announcement of the Winner of the 2010 Maurice Prize for Fiction

Melinda Moustakis


2010 Maurice Prize for Fiction

Prize Winner



The UC Davis English Department and novelist John Lescroart are pleased to announce Melinda Moustakis the winner of the 6th annual Maurice Prize in Fiction contest. Melinda will receive the $5,000 prize for her winning entry, Bear Down, Bear North, selected from 11 novels submitted this year. She is a 2006 graduate of the M.A. English program for creative writers. The $5,000 prize is a gift from John Lescroart in honor of his father, Maurice, for whom the contest is named.


Bear Down, Bear North was selected the best novel submitted by alumni of the creative writing program at UC Davis who haven't published a book-length manuscript. It is John Lescroart's hope to inspire the department's graduates to publish their literary work. Three previous winners have gone on to achieve that goal.


Benjamin Percy, judged this year’s contest. He is the author of The Wilding, Refresh,Refresh, and The Language of Elk among many other publications. He is the recipient of the Whiting Award, Plimpton Prize and anthologized in Best American Short Stories. He is assistant professor in the MFA program at Iowa State University as well as a member of the faculty at the Low Res MFA Pacific University program.


This year's 2010 finalists are Kate Swoboda, (Class of 2004), Palimpsest, and Halina Duraj, (Class of 2003), Fatherland: A Novel.



Previous recipients of this award include:

* Angie Chau, 2009 winner (Class of 2005), A Map Back to You
* Melanie Thorne, 2008 winner (Class of 2006), Hand Me Down

* Elizabeth Chamberlin, 2007 winner (Class of 2006), these people, they crawl all over the place

* Shawna Ryan, 2006 winner, Locke 1928. (Class of 2001). Locke 1928 was published in 2007 by El Leon Literary Arts.

* Spring Warren, 2005 winner, The Breaks.(Class of 2002). Her first book Turpentinewas published in September 2007 by Grove Atlantic.