Carrie Brown Wins 1998 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award

Posted on February 8, 1999

Barnes & Noble has announced that Carrie Brown has been named the winner of the 1998 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award for her debut novel, Rose's Garden, published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. The 1998 Discover Great New Writers Award will be presented on March 9th in a special ceremony at Barnes & Noble Union Square at 7:30p.m.

This literary award honors the first novel by an American author featured in the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers program during the 1998 calendar year. The Discover Award carries a cash prize of $10,000 with the winner receiving a trip to New York City for a host of award-related festivities.

In 1998, the Discover Great New Writers program featured the work of seventy-nine new writers, with thirty-eight of those qualifying for the Discover Award. This year the judges elected to name a shortlist for the award. Chosen from among the thirty-eight eligible books, the shortlist consisted of three authors who the judges felt deserved special recognition. In addition to Carrie Brown, the shortlist included Joe Connelly, author of Bringing Out the Dead (Knopf), and Tom McNeal, author of Goodnight Nebraska (Random House). 1998 marks the sixth anniversary of the Award and Ms. Brown, joins the ranks of an exceptional group of past winners, including David Guterson, author of Snow Falling on Cedars, Elizabeth McCracken, author of The Giant's House, and J. Robert Lennon, author of The Light of Falling Stars.

Carrie Brown grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut and the small town of Williamsville, Vermont (near Brattleboro). When she was a child, her father was transferred for business, first to England, where the family lived in a village outside Winchester, and then to Hong Kong. After graduating from Brown University (where she earned a BA with Honors in English), she moved to Maryland, where she worked for thirteen years for Patuxent Publishing Company (now owned by the Times Mirror Company) which publishes local newspapers. Starting as a general assistant reporter, she worked as a writer and editor at a number of the papers in the chain, and eventually became Associate Editor of the company's flagship paper, The Columbia Flier.