2010 Chicago Tribune Literary Prize

Sam Shepard has won with the 2010 Chicago Tribune Literary Prize for lifetime achievement. Tribune editor Gerould Kern said, "In selecting Shepard, we recognize his significant influence on American culture. He transcends boundaries of form, with his talent stretching from the stage to page." Shephard is the Renaissance man: playwright, screenwriter, author, stage and film director, musician, songwriter and actor. He has received a Pulitzer Prize (Buried Child,, Drama Desk and Obie Awards, and Tony nominations for his playwriting; an Oscar nomination for his film acting (The Right Stuff); a British Academy of Film and Television Arts,BAFTA, nomination for his screenwriting (Paris, Texas); and Emmy, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild nominations for his television acting. "Sam Shepard is the premiere dramatist of rural America," Tribune theater critic Chris Jones said. "His work chronicles wide-open spaces, domestic dysfunction and long, brooding silences on the prairie." Shepard joins an illustrious group of Literary Prize winners which includes 2009 winner Tony Kushner, Arthur Miller, Tom Wolfe, August Wilson, Joyce Carol Oates, Margaret Atwood, E.L. Doctorow and David McCullough.
The Chicago Tribune honored the 2010 Heartland Prizes recipients Rebecca Skloot for The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (nonfiction) and E.O. Wilson for Anthill (fiction) Skloot told the Tribune that the award is her first for the book. "I was absolutely ecstatic when I found about it. I was very humbled to be in (the previous winners') company." The past two recipients of the non-fiction Heartland Prize were Nick Reding's Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town and Garry Wills Head and Heart: American Christianities. Anthill is the 81-year-old biologist/naturalist's debut novel. He has had a notable career, winning two Pulitzer Prizes (for On Human Nature, and The Ants, with Bert Holldobler. Wilson told the Tribune: "The greatest surprise and the greatest pleasure from getting the Heartland award is that it's for fiction. For 43 years I've been publishing non-fiction. I thought I'd never publish anything else. But I had one novel in me." The previous two winners of the fiction Heartland Prize were Jayne Anne Phillips' Lark & Termite and Aleksandar Hemon's The Lazarus Project.