Sophie Kerr Winner Receives $135,000 Advance for First Book

Chestertown, MD, February 12, 2001 — Christine Lincoln '00, winner of the 2000 Sophie Kerr Prize, the largest undergraduate literary prize in the nation, has received a $135,000 advance from Pantheon, a division of Random House Publishers, for her first collection of short stories.

"I think they're superb," said literary agent Sara Chalfant of the Wylie Agency in New York concerning Lincoln's stories. "They're in the glorious tradition of Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison and the early Alice walker. They are luminous."

Several publishing houses bid on Lincoln's collection, but she chose Pantheon because of editor Erroll McDonald.

"I felt like his vision of the book was closest to my vision," Lincoln said. "He said, 'You're an African American woman, this is your voice.'"

The collection will include stories that Lincoln submitted last year to the Sophie Kerr Committee as well as others written after graduation. The book is slated for a fall 2001 release.