Mark Brazaitis’ skillful and illuminating writing has earned the director of creative writing the 2010 Benedum Distinguished Scholar Award, West Virginia University’s premier faculty research honor.

This award includes $5,000 and recognition at the University Honors Convocation during the Annual Weekend of Honors April 9-11, 2010.

“The sole criterion for receipt of this award is excellence in creative research,” said C.B. Wilson, associate provost for academic personnel.

“The committee determined that Professor Brazaitis’ writing over a decade demonstrated such a standard, as evidenced by his books and other publications of stories, essays and poems in prestigious literary journals.”

Brazaitis is an accomplished and prolific author, having published four award-winning books, including “The Other Language,” winner of the 2008 ABZ Poetry Prize and “An American Affair,” winner of the 2004 George Garrett Fiction Prize.

His work, including 40 short stories, 50 poems and numerous essays, has been published in a wide range of prominent literary magazines. He has also written pieces for top newspapers and was the screenwriter for the award-winning Peace Corps documentary, “How Far Are You Willing to Go to Make a Difference?”

Brazaitis’ work has been reprinted in a dozen anthologies and has been taught in classrooms from Texas to Washington D.C. He has given more than 75 public readings of his work throughout the United States and has been featured on National Public Radio.

A recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, Brazaitis has also been named a Peace Corps Notable Returned Volunteer in recognition of his literary success.

Brazaitis will share his creativity with the WVU community when he presents the annual Benedum Lecture on Tuesday, April 13 at 4 p.m. in the Rhododendron Room of the Mountainlair.

His talk, “The Incurables,” will explore portrayals of depression and mental illness in his fictional work.

“The title of my talk, ‘The Incurables,’ is also the title of one of my short stories, and it alludes to the powerful but deceptive sense of hopelessness depression engenders in those who suffer from it,” Brazaitis said.
Brazaitis is a Harvard graduate who twice served in the Peace Corps and received an MFA in creative writing from Bowling Green State University.

His Peace Corps assignment landed him in Guatemala to instruct farmers on the particulars of grain-storage and crop improvement techniques. While there, he was recruited to teach English to school children in his village.

“I had never taught in a classroom. For supplies, I had a piece of chalk and a blackboard. I had three classes of 40 students each. I couldn’t do anything but improvise. I improvised every day, and it was a little scary but also exciting,” Brazaitis said.

He may not have envisioned a life of teaching, but Brazaitis knew from an early age he wanted to become a writer.

“My grandmother talked about poets as if they were gods, and my father was a fine journalist with an economical and engaging style, and, for a long time, I thought I would follow in his footsteps,” Brazaitis said.

“Ultimately, I had different ambitions for my writing. I wanted to write the kind of stuff that had wowed me as a reader – Tolstoy, Turgenev, Camus, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Kafka – these were writers who had shaped the way I saw the world.”

Brazaitis shapes the world of his fictional subjects through the lens of his own knowledge. Many of his poems and short stories draw on his experiences in Guatemala but are re-imagined to examine differing and unexpected points of view.

“In fiction and, to a lesser extent, poetry, I’m attracted to pursuing truths that can’t adequately be explored by relying on the facts,” Brazaitis said.

“It’s the truth, as Faulkner described it, of the human heart in conflict with itself.”

Critics have expressed delight with this honest, luminous and complex approach to storytelling. These sentiments were echoed by Brazaitis’ colleagues in his nomination for this year’s award.

“In writing ‘An American Affair,’ Brazaitis has opened the field of contemporary American fiction to new topics and perspectives, or at least blown the dust off what used to be more frequently visited literary terrain,” noted Kathleen Ryan, WVU associate professor of English.

“He is a fantastic writer, colleague and teacher. It is our great fortune to have him here,” she added.

Brazaitis and Ryan arrived at the WVU Department of English at the same time more than 10 years ago, and he is honored that she will be introducing him at the April 13 lecture.
“I have been lucky, and I am lucky, to be surrounded by wonderful colleagues who inspire with their creative and scholarly work, their teaching and their generosity of spirit. They create an environment in which it’s possible to do one’s best work,” Brazaitis said.

The Benedum and Distinguished Professors of WVU established the Benedum Distinguished Scholar Awards in 1985 to honor and reward faculty for excellence in research, scholarship and creative endeavors.

The awards recognize either a single recent achievement of note or a long, distinguished career that is still ongoing.

The program is funded by the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation and coordinated by the Office of Academic Affairs and Research.

-WVU-

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