The Creative Writing Series invites you to come and listen to a reading from 2023 Sparks Prize winner: Lance Carroll
The Sparks Prize is annually awarded to a distinguished graduate of the Creative Writing Program as a post-graduation year of residency and writing time, funded by Nicholas Sparks and judged by an external writer. Based on the quality of writing and the likelihood that the submission will be published or will be developed into a publishable book.
2023 Sparks Prize Judge Tess Gunty selected Carroll's KAIROS as the winning entry. Gunty writes:
"With breathtaking prose, refined pacing, and an undeniable raison d’être, KAIROS sings. Here is a voice determined to excavate interpersonal and institutional hypocrisies with precision and tenderness, generosity and courage. There is no doubt that the author of this work has embarked on an auspicious literary career."
Lance Carroll is a writer who, while born in southern Missouri, has migrated throughout the entirety of the Midwest. He graduated from Shimer College—"the worst school in the country"—where he earned a degree in liberal arts after a year of study in Oxford. At Notre Dame, he has served as the co-editor of fiction for Notre Dame Review and taught classes on nonfiction and speculative fiction. He is working on a hybrid memoir about sexuality and religious experience.