"Dignity and Urgency in Edinburgh and London" wins Michigan Quarterly Review's Lawrence Prize
Sean Gill
Sean Gill's short story, "Dignity and Urgency in Edinburgh and London," which appeared last year in Michigan Quarterly Review, has been named the winner of their Lawrence Prize, for the best story published in MQR in 2019.
Judge Laura Kasischke writes, "Sean Gill’s 'Dignity and Urgency in Edinburgh and London' is a story that is timeless in its evocation of a character trapped between ruin and stasis, and a story that speaks directly to our time: it brings us the news of an individual (who stands for the millions living alongside him) and of the personal tragedies of the powerless, whose lives have become at best an afterthought in the decisions made for them by the powerful and the impersonal. Anthony Nibley/Beefeater Bill is forced to suffer and somehow to survive, with dignity and urgency, within a 'magnifcent history blotted with greedy trimmings.' Sean Gill has written an urgently necessary story, creating a character to enact the suffering of so many, and also granting him the dignity he deserves but has been otherwise stripped of and denied—and neither this character nor his story can be forgotten."
