“Astute incisive, and rich in historical context.” That’s what judges and critics Ted Genoways, editor of Virgnia Quarterly Review, and NBCC board members Rebecca Skloot and Oscar Villalon had to say about Emily Wilkinson of Pasadena, California, winner of the VQR Young Reviewers Contest for her review of “The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective”“by Kate Summerscale.
The prize: $1,000, publication of the review in the Winter 2009 issue of VQR, a contract for additional reviews worth up to $3,000.00, and a one-year membership in the National Book Critics Circle. Wilkinson is a graduate student at Stanford University where she is finishing her doctoral thesis in Restoration and eighteenth century British literature and a writer for the lit blog “The Millions.”
The finalists, all of whom will receive an NBCC membership and a year’s VQR sub:
* Giles Harvey (New York, NY)
* Michael Lukas (Berkeley, CA)
* Amanda Redig (Chicago, IL)
* Matthew Shaer (Brooklyn, NY)
* Jacob Silverman (Los Angeles, CA)
VQR tells us they had more than 120 submissions from the U.S. and eight other countries.