April, 2007—Graywolf Press is thrilled to announce that author Benjamin Percy’s short story “Refresh, Refresh” has been selected to receive the Plimpton Prize given by The Paris Review. The $10,000 prize is awarded to the best work of fiction published in The Paris Review in a given year by a new voice in American literature.
Graywolf Press publisher and director, Fiona McCrae said upon announcement of the prize, “I’m delighted for Benjamin Percy, who is very deserving of this acknowledgment. We are proud to be publishing a wider selection of his work, a short story collection, REFRESH, REFRESH this fall.  These stories define the complex emotions of our society’s relationship to the Iraqi war and the dramatic changes inherent to the modernization of our nation’s last frontier.”

The Plimpton Prize honors The Paris Review’s longtime editor, George Plimpton, who presided over the magazine for fifty years, until his death in September 2003. The prize will be awarded annually for the best piece of fiction by a newcomer to appear in The Paris Review that year. Prior recipients include Malinda McCollum, Yiyun Li, and John Barlow. This year the Plimpton Prize committee of The Paris Review Board of Directors was made up of Peter Matthiessen, Jeanne McCulloch and Robert Silvers.

Graywolf Press will publish REFRESH, REFRESH by Benjamin Percy in October 2007. The title story was selected for Best American Short Stories 2006, a Pushcart Prize, and the Plimpton Prize, and is based on a small town in Ohio where approximately 15 fathers and husbands and brothers and sons died in an ambush in Iraq. Percy was raised in the high desert of central Oregon, his muse, his final frontier, and the setting of many of his stories. He is the author of The Language of Elk, and his stories have appeared in Esquire, The Paris Review, and other magazines and journals.

Since founding in 1953, The Paris Review has promoted creative works of fiction and poetry while expanding the Writers at Work interview series, revealing rare insights into authors’ lives and art. The Review has introduced audiences to influential writers such as Adrienne Rich, Philip Roth, and Jack Kerouac, in the earliest stages of their careers.