06-56
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 29, 2006
Contact: Christine A. Somosi
216.397.4663 (w)
csomosi@jcu.edu
www.jcu.edu

John Carroll University’s
Dr. Steven Hayward Honored
with Top Italian Prize for Emerging Writers

CLEVELAND, OH – Steven Hayward, PhD, assistant professor of English at John Carroll University, was recently honored with the Premio Grinzane Cavour Prize for “Best Emerging Writer.” The prize is one of Italy’s most prestigious literary awards for young writers. Dr. Hayward received the award for his first novel, The Secret Mitzvah of Lucio Burke, during a ceremony at the Grinzane Cavour Castle near Turin, Italy, on June 17, 2006.

“I am deeply honored by this prize. It’s remarkable and gratifying to have one’s work recognized half way around the world, in another country, and in another language,” said Dr. Hayward.

Steven Hayward, who joined a talented group of creative writing faculty at John Carroll in 2002, was born and raised in Toronto. His short fiction has won awards at the University of Toronto, the University of North Carolina, and the University of Arkansas. His first book, Buddha Stevens and Other Stories, won the 2001 Upper Canada Writers’ Craft Award and was a Globe and Mail top 100 book of the year.

“It is especially pleasing to know that the world is taking note of one of John Carroll University’s bright and talented faculty members,” said Dr. David La Guardia, academic vice president at John Carroll University. “Steven Hayward’s ability to engage and evoke emotion in his audience makes him not only a noteworthy novelist, but an inspiring teacher as well."

“If Hayward is a new face his soul feels old. . . . [He is] an engaging writer, with an offbeat sense of humour and a knack for making us care about his seriously flawed but mainly big-hearted characters. There are traces of Bernard Malamud’s baseball fable,
The Natural in The Secret Mitzvah of Lucio Burke, and some John Irving, too. . . .
In the world according to Hayward, you expect the unexpected.” —Joel Yanofsky, National Post.

The Grinzane Cavour Prize, established in 1982 with the aim of forming a young generation of readers, has become a recognized cultural institution involved not only in the annual literary prize but also in various events promoting reading. As well as for best work of literature, the prize is awarded in different categories including: cinema adapted from literature; poetry; music; and writing science. The prize has been awarded to writers around the world such as Jorge Amado, Mario Vargas Llosa, Günter Grass, Nadine Gordimer, Doris Lessing, Wole Soyinka, Carlos Fuentes, Czeslaw Milosz, J. M. Coetzee and V.S. Naipaul. The prize consists of 5000 euros ($6,100). More information on the prize can be found at www.grinzane.it.

John Carroll University, located in Cleveland, Ohio, is a liberal arts university grounded in the Jesuit, Catholic tradition. The university has some 3,350 plus undergraduates and just over 750 graduate students. The U.S. News & World Report’s 2006 annual college guide ranks John Carroll University among the top 10 master’s-degree granting universities in the Midwest and first in average graduation rate. Originally founded as
St. Ignatius College in 1886, the university was renamed in 1923 to honor America’s first Catholic bishop, John Carroll of Maryland. John Carroll is one of 28 Jesuit colleges and universities located in the United States.

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