PrintDec. 15--IOWA CITY -- When University of Iowa graduate student Justin Torres got an e-mail about his anonymous nomination for an arts prize that includes a $50,000 grant, he thought it was a joke.
"Like those 'I'm from Nigeria and you have a chance to win a million dollars' e-mails," Torres, a fiction student in the Iowa Writers' Workshop, said Monday.
"But then I Googled the foundation and I thought, 'Wow, this is for real.' " Torres, 29, was among the 50 winners of $50,000 United States Artists Fellowship grants announced last night in Santa Monica. He is the only Iowa-based winner of a USA Fellowship since United States Artists began giving them four years ago. Award winners work in fields such as dance, literature, media, theater and visual arts.
Past and current winners in literature include some of Torres' literary heroes, he said.
"There were definitely superstars in that room," Torres said of the cocktail reception Sunday when he met fellow 2009 winners, including writer Sapphire, who wrote the novel "Push," which is the basis for the current movie "Precious." "It was unbelievable to be meeting those people." Torres grew up in upstate New York and moved to Iowa City to attend the Writers' Workshop. He'll graduate in May. His short stories have been published in several literary journals.
United States Artists officials say of his work: "Torres' short stories deal with issues of assimilation and alienation and he strives to represent more complicated depictions of his communities, self-described as 'Queer, Working-Class Puerto Rican.' " The unrestricted $50,000 grant award likely will help sustain him for several years while he works on finishing his first book, a series of short stories that are interconnected and concern the same family. The work includes autobiographical material and examines the relationship among three brothers -- just as in Torres' family -- but it's not a memoir, Torres said.
"I like the fiction aspect of siblings, the way identity gets submerged into the murkiness of 'we' instead of 'I,' " Torres said. "It's hilarious -- my brothers have read some of the stories and they say, 'Oh, I remember that,' and I'll say 'That didn't happen. I made that up.' "
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