UWG News Item
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Professor publishes short story
March 27, 2006
CARROLLTON,
GA - Dr. Allison Umminger, assistant professor of English at the University
of West Georgia, won the Lawrence Foundation Award for best short story
writing published in the Prairie Schooner magazine.
“Alien Life” is the first chapter and title of a novel written by Umminger. She plans to include the chapter in a collection of other stories she has written. Umminger said that getting her short story published was a long and challenging process.
“Clearly, I am elated with this award,” said Umminger. “The publication of this story, as the process is for most publications, is a matter of persistence. I probably sent this story out to 30 places, and to much lesser magazines than Prairie Schooner, before it was accepted. Then, there was a two-year lag time between the story's acceptance and its publication. The story was written in 1998 or 1999, so that gives you a sense of how truly glacial publishing can be.”
The story is about how a 13-year-old girl who tries to make sense of the malevolence she feels in the world after discovering her brother has been molested by his soccer coach.
Prairie Schooner is a national literary quarterly established in 1927 and supported by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the University of Nebraska Press. It publishes fiction, poetry, essays, and reviews written by beginning, mid-career and established writers.
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