Every year, Austin Community College gives out two national writing prizes, one for poetry and one for fiction. Both prizes are open to any English language book, with a panel of judges awarding a $1500 prize to the winning author.
This year's award winners were both selected for their first books and will both be in Austin on April 9 to read from their prize-winning works. Hanna Pylainen was awarded the Balcones Fiction Prize for her debut novel We Sinners, which explores the obscure Finnish religious sect in which Paylainen herself was raised in Michigan.
Poetry winner Natalie Diaz was selected for her collection When My Brother Was an Aztec.
Diaz and Pylainen will both be doing a reading at the ACC Rio Grande campus at 6:30 pm on April 9; the event is free and open to the public.
