{"id":2068,"date":"2015-07-27T08:42:51","date_gmt":"2015-07-27T13:42:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/alumni\/?p=2068"},"modified":"2015-07-27T08:42:51","modified_gmt":"2015-07-27T13:42:51","slug":"nina-mcconigley-97","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/alumni\/2015\/07\/nina-mcconigley-97\/","title":{"rendered":"Nina McConigley \u201997"},"content":{"rendered":"<div data-modular-content-collection><h2><a name=\"NinaMcConigley97_N\"><\/a><\/h2>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/classhomepages\/files\/2014\/12\/97_NinaMcConigley_N.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-161 size-thumbnail\" src=\"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/classhomepages\/files\/2014\/12\/97_NinaMcConigley_N-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"97_NinaMcConigley_N\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a>University of Wyoming Department of English Lecturer Nina McConigley is the recipient of a $5,000 PEN Open Book Award. The prestigious international organization announced the winners Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>McConigley\u2019s collection of short stories, titled <em>Cowboys and East Indians<\/em>, was one of two PEN Open Book Awards given. The other winner was Ruth Ellen Kocher for her work, titled \u201cdomina Un\/blued.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe prize recognizes the best book in 2013 written by a writer of color &#8212; and it&#8217;s pretty amazing that it comes out of Wyoming,\u201d McConigley says. \u201cOther people on the short-list have been nominated for the Booker Prize and won Guggenheims &#8212; so it was amazing company. I honestly did not think I would win. Just making the short-list and long-list seemed pretty great.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Formerly the Beyond Margins Awards, the PEN Open Book Award offers a $5,000 prize to an author of color for book-length writings committed to racial and ethnic diversity within the literary and publishing communities. Works of fiction, literary nonfiction, biography\/memoir, poetry and other works of literary character are strongly preferred.<\/p>\n<p>Published by FiveChapters Books, <em>Cowboys and East Indians<\/em> is a collection of short stories set in Wyoming that explores the immigrant experience and the collisions of cultures in the American West. Several stories in the award-winning book began when McConigley was working on her M.A. thesis with UW Professor Alyson Hagy. McConigley says she took some of her first creative writing classes at UW.<\/p>\n<p>Born in Singapore to Irish and Indian parents, McConigley grew up in Casper, Wyo. She holds a master\u2019s degree in English from UW, a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of Houston, and a bachelor\u2019s degree in literature from St. Olaf College.<\/p>\n<p>McConigley also has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and the \u201cBest American New Voices.\u201d Her play, <em>Owen Wister Considered<\/em>, was produced in 2005 for the Edward Albee New Playwrights Festival. She was the 2010 recipient of the Wyoming Arts Council\u2019s Frank Nelson Doubleday Memorial Writing Award and was a finalist for the 2011 Flannery O\u2019Connor Short Fiction Award.<\/p>\n<p>Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Virginia Quarterly Review, American Short Fiction and the Asian American Literary Review, among others.<br \/>\nInternational PEN, the worldwide association of writers, was founded in 1921 to promote friendship and intellectual cooperation among writers everywhere; to emphasize literature\u2019s role in developing mutual understanding and world culture; to fight for freedom of expression; and to act as a powerful voice on behalf of writers harassed, imprisoned and, sometimes, killed for their views.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>University of Wyoming Department of English Lecturer Nina McConigley is the recipient of a $5,000 PEN Open Book Award. The prestigious international organization announced the winners Wednesday. McConigley\u2019s collection of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[64],"class_list":["post-2068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-52","tag-news"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2068\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}