The Hackney Literary Award
Since 1969 the independent Hackney Literary Awards has awarded prizes in short story, poem and novel, in both state (Alabama) and national divisions. This year there were 200 entries in the national division of the novel.

Judging is done by writing professionals, including avid readers and experienced editors. The novel award in the national division is accompanied by a monetary prize, plus the opportunity to publish an excerpt in Birmingham Arts Journal. At least six winners of the award have gone on to publish their award-winning novels.

Until this year, Hackney Literary Awards, a fully independent organization, collaborated with Birmingham-Southern College. However, the Awards themselves have never been affiliated with any university. More information can be obtained at www.hackneyliteraryawards.org

Currently being offered to publishers, Running from Mercy focuses on a mythic father-son journey toward spiritual redemption.

Running from Mercy: The Psalms of Israel Jones, an unpublished novel by Ed Davis, won the 2010 Hackney Award for the novel.

Excerpt from Running from Mercy:

I stand mesmerized by the cacophony of sound and color. The room, as large as a dancehall, is alive with blazing neon and electric guitar—at first I think we’ve stepped inside a roadhouse circa 1958 with a rockabilly band in full swing—until I see the hand-lettered sign at the front: No bad langage. No woman in pants. No long hair.

We aren’t in a rowdy nightclub where a pimply-faced Jerry Lee is wailing; we are in church: Whitechapel Church of Lindsey, West Virginia, to be exact, and it’s 2005. But before I can fully savor the first flush of recognition, I see, lifted high above the whirlwind crowd, shimmering obscenely like a naked breast at communion, a tight coil. The sound I make is thankfully absorbed into the din surrounding me. A man holds a large snake in his palm...
(Read more at the Birmingham Arts Journal Vol. 8 Issue 2 starting on page 38.)