Ben RICE

2001
  • Europe
  • Northern Europe
  • United Kingdom
English

Ben RICE (b. 1972, Tiverton, Devon) is the 2001 recipient of the Somerset Maugham Award. His first book, the novella Poppy and Dingan (2000), was very well received and is published in the US by Knopf, with rights sold in 20 countries around the world. His travels-through Europe, Asia and the Pacific, the Mediterranean-also include a year in Maine as a child, when his father was an exchange professor. At eighteen he taught English as a second language for a half year in the Czech Republic. He holds the M.A. with distinction from the University of East Anglia, his country's most competitive creative writing program. The US State Department provides his participation in the program.

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Happening Now

  • In addition to becoming the Berlin LitFest’s first curator-in-residence, Helon Habila has also just received Kaduna Books and Art Festival’s KabaFest Lifetime Achievement Award, celebrating his "exceptional writing and significant contributions to the development of literature globally."

  • Congratulations to Enah Johnscott, whose film Half Heaven won three awards at the Cameroon International Film Festival—best film, best director, and best cinematographer.

  • We regret the passing, on April 11, 2024, of the distinguished Romanian author and critic Dan Cristea, who served as the editor in chief of the Luceafărul de Dimineață cultural monthly. In addition to being an alum of the 1985 Fall Residency, Cristea received his PhD in Comparative Literature at the University of Iowa.

  • Our congratulations to 1986 Fall Residency writer Kwame Dawes, who has been named the new poet laureate of Jamaica.

  • Congratulations to our colleagues Jennifer Croft and Aron Aji, who are among those serving as judges for the National Book Awards this year, in their case in the category of translated literature.

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