Art history professor wins prize for literary work
St. Olaf College Visiting Assistant Professor of Art History Christopher Tradowsky has won the 2013 BLOOM Fiction Chapbook Prize for his story Mountain Cousins.
The story, a rewrite of a myth from Ovid’s Metamorphosis, “is so wickedly original, so inventive and assured and downright strange, that it’s hard to believe it wasn’t written by a seasoned literary star with several novels under his belt,” writes the contest’s judge.
Tradowsky says his work as an art historian has given him a deep appreciation for classical mythology. He used that, along with his rural upbringing, as inspiration for the story.
“Since I grew up on a horse farm in rural Ohio, I just thought I’d see what sort of bizarre hybrid would emerge from setting Ovid in a rural American/Appalachian setting,” he says.
Tradowsky earned his Ph.D. in art history from the University of California, Los Angeles. His writing has also been featured in Harrington Gay Men’s Fiction Quarterly, The Battered Suitcase, Spontaneous Combustion, and CAA Art Journal.