Bennett Wins Prize

Janey Bennett has been named winner of the Joanna Catherine Scott Novel Excerpt Prize in the National League of American Pen Women, Nob Hill branch Soul-Making Literary Competition. Bennett's latest novel, with the working title of Jia Li, is the story of the failing adoption of a Chinese daughter.

Bennett will read from her novel at the Soul-Making Awards event in San Francisco in March.

Bennett's first novel, The Pale Surface of Things, which has won seven book-industry awards since its publication, received second place in the PEN Nob Hill Soul-Making Awards in 2004.

The Soul-Making Literary Competition is a national award that looks for original, freshly creative and finely crafted works that embrace all creative interpretations of English poet, John Keats' statement: "Some say the world is a vale of tears, I say it is a place of soul-making"