Daniel Jose Older has been awarded the Speculative Literature Foundation’s Gulliver Travel Grant for 2013.

Older’s novel, The Book of Lost Saints, weaves post-revolutionary Cuba with present-day New Jersey, tied together by unsettled ghosts. Older will use the $800 grant to travel to Cuba to research prisons where political prisoners were held.

SLF says other writers shortlisted for the grant were Akwaeke Emezi, Russell Nichols, Eden Robins, Oksana Marifioti, and Alina Rios.

The full press release follows the jump.

Update 11/28/2013: Corrected misspelling of winner’s name in first line.

Press Release #43

SPECULATIVE LITERATURE FOUNDATION ANNOUNCES GULLIVER TRAVEL GRANT WINNER

SPECULATIVE LITERATURE FOUNDATION

PO Box 1693

Dubuque, IA 52004-1693

[email protected] – http://www.speculativeliterature.org/

For Immediate Release: Nov 26, 2013

The Speculative Literature Foundation is delighted to announce that Daniel Jose Older is the winner of the 2013 Gulliver Travel Grant.

Older’s novel, The Book of Lost Saints, weaves post-revolutionary Cuba with present-day New Jersey, tied together by unsettled ghosts drawn to the music of a culture that has evolved without them. Older will use the $800 grant to travel to Cuba to research prisons that Cuban political prisoners were held in.

The Travel Grant judges said of Older’s entry, “Wonderful narrative voice: playful, engaging, quick, and written with a seriousness, humor, and a storytelling acuity not often seen.”

Also shortlisted were: Akwaeke Emezi, Russell Nichols, Eden Robins, Oksana Marifioti, and Alina Rios, for their outstanding submissions, which made the selection of the eventual winner a difficult but enjoyable process.

—————-

PR Contact: Corie Ralston [email protected]

The Speculative Literature Foundation is a volunteer-run, non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the interests of readers, writers, editors and publishers in the speculative literature community.

“Speculative literature” is a catch-all term meant to inclusively span the breadth of fantastic literature, encompassing literature ranging from hard and soft science fiction to epic fantasy to ghost stories to folk and fairy tales to slipstream to magical realism to modern mythmaking — any literature containing a fabulist or speculative element.