Western Washington University Associate Professor of English Kathryn Trueblood won the 2013 Bellevue Literary Review Goldenberg Prize for Fiction for her story "The No-Tell Hotel," according to a press release.
The contest was judged by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jane Smiley.
"The No-Tell Hotel" follows a mother who has opened her door to her son's friends who have run away or been kicked out of their homes after high school graduation. One of these teenagers in particular, Sid, has a mother with multiple sclerosis who the narrator must care for after Sid runs away.
Trueblood herself was hospitalized and diagnosed with an autoimmune disease in 2007, according to the press release.
"The experience of illness has affected my work profoundly," Trueblood said. "Many of the stories in the collection I'm writing now, 'The Medicated Marriage,' are about children and parents finding love in the imperfect. There's very little in our society that recognizes living well with pain or illness. This award has made me so happy, beyond words."
Trueblood's book, "The Baby Lottery," was a Book Sense Pick in 2007 and more recently, she won the 2011 Red Hen Press Short Story Award. She has been published in The Los Angeles Review, The Seattle Weekly, Poets and Writers Magazine and many other publications. She has taught at Western since 1991.
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