Literary prize to be awarded for agrarian prose

May 15, 2011

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

LITERARY PRIZE TO BE AWARDED FOR AGRARIAN PROSE

 Richard M. Thorson family to award $500 to winning author, Knuckledown Press to publish book
(Fargo, N.D.) - Knuckledown Press, an independent Midwestern literary small press, began accepting submissions May 15, 2011, for the Richard M. Thorson Literary Prize for Agrarian Prose, which is awarded annually for a previously unpublished manuscript of literary fiction or creative nonfiction with an agrarian setting. The Richard M. Thorson family will award $500 and Knuckledown Press will grant a publishing contract to the winning author.

What is "agrarian prose?"

“It might be about the rural way of life generally, or about farmers and farming specifically, but it might just be about how living out of town means living wild, and how nature—even cultivated land—is a spiritual force to be reckoned with,” said Ryan C. Christiansen, publisher for Knuckledown Press. For the contest, Christiansen said the editors are looking for works that are “agricultural and rural, mostly honest, plain, and natural, sometimes rustic, native, or wild, but rarely peaceful—and never pure.”

The literary prize is named after Richard M. Thorson (April 26, 1915 - June 1, 1981), who grew up on a farm in Colfax township in Kandiyohi County, Minn., where he attended rural school. In the fall of 1937, he attended the Riesch American School of Auctioneering in Austin, Minn., and the following spring, he started working as an auctioneer. Besides auctioneering farm sales in the region, Mr. Thorson managed the Belgrade, Minn., sales barn, helped to operate his home farm, and managed the Farmers Livestock Shipping Association. He was president of the Lake Prairie Rural Telephone Company and a director for the Belgrade Cooperative Association. He was an avid outdoorsman. “Members of the Thorson family are pleased to honor their forbearer’s legacy with this prize,” Christiansen said, “and Knuckledown Press is excited about the opportunity to bring literature about rural life to readers everywhere.”

For more information about Knuckledown Press and how to enter the contest, visit the press’s web site at www.knuckledownpress.com.