UF professor Mary Robison turned her short stories into tall stacks of cash.
Robison recently received the prestigious Rea Award for the Short Story along with $30,000.
The award is given annually by a panel of three judges and is sponsored by the Dungannon Foundation. It goes to authors who have made a significant contribution to the short story as an art form, according to the award’s website.
Robison, who has focused primarily on novel writing as of late, did not expect to receive the award because she had not written a short story in some time.
“I couldn’t have been more surprised,” Robison said. “I hadn’t written a short story in a while. I thought it was a mistake.”
She was also surprised by the prize money.
“There was some mention of getting my address to send me a check,” she said. “I said ‘Oh God, there’s money involved?’ They told me, ‘Yes, in fact, there’s $30,000.’”
Robison has been referred to as a minimalist author, though she is hesitant to label herself as such.
“[Minimalist] sounds to me like you haven’t worked very hard,” she said. “It sounds like you’re doing the minimum. It’s more about selection and choosing exactly the bits of description you need in the story.”
Over the course of her career, Robison has published four short-story collections: “Days,” “An Amateur’s Guide to the Night,” “Believe Them,” and “Tell Me: 30 Stories.”
Some of her short stories were originally published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Esquire, GQ and Harvard Magazine.
Robison has also published four novels, including “Why Did I Ever” and the critically acclaimed “One D.O.A., One on the Way,” which was featured on Oprah Winfrey’s 2009 summer reading list.
