Chez Robert Giron

William Orem who lives in Newton, Massachusetts has won the 2018 Gival Press Novel Award for his novel titled Miss Lucy, which was chosen anonymously by the final judge John Domini. Orem will receive a cash prize of $3,000 as well as copies of his novel which will be published in the fall of 2019.

Advance Praise
“A master-chef's layer-cake, Miss Lucy serves up delights for every taste. It’s got Gothic nightmares to make the skin crawl, illuminating portraits of 19th-Century Dublin and London, X-ray insights into the workings of money and class, deft appropriations from a sumptuous library (Oscar Wilde, anyone?), and above all the tormented humanity of its central figure, Bram Stoker, author of Dracula. William Orem dreams Stoker to life with terrific vividness and subtlety, fluent in all the languages of late Victorian society. The story may, over a single long night riddled with shadows, travel from bejeweled aristocrats at the theater to the reeking slums that allowed Jack the Ripper to flourish. It offers a vision at once perverse and transcendent, a miracle that eludes the crush of history— a tour de force.”
— John Domini, judge and author of A Tomb on the Periphery and MOVIEOLA!

About the Author

William Orem’s first collection of stories, Zombi, You My Love, won the GLCA New Writers Award, formerly given to Louise Erdrich, Sherman Alexie, Richard Ford and Alice Munro. His second collection, Across the River, won the Texas Review Novella Prize. His first novel, Killer of Crying Deer, won the Eric Hoffer Award for Excellence in the Small Presses, and has been optioned for film. His first collection of poems, Our Purpose in Speaking, won the Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize, and he has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize in poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction.

Meanwhile, his short plays have been performed around the country, winning both the Critics’ Prize and Audience Favorite Award at Durango Theatre Fest, and thrice being nominated for the prestigious Heideman Award at Actors Theatre of Louisville.

(Photo by Lauren Proll.)

A native of Washington, D.C., he currently is a Senior Writer-in-Residence at Emerson College, where he teaches, among other things, classes on gothic literature. Details at williamorem.com.

The finalists:

Gimme Some Familiars by Jessica Mehta of Hillsboro, Oregon.
Run Run My Little One by John Blair of San Marcos, Texas.
Danny Fowler’s Killing by Jim Sanderson of Beaumont, Texas.
American Apparel by Rudy Ruiz of San Antonio, Texas.


Gival Press is an-award winning, small, independent press which sponsors awards for the best original English novel, short story, poetry collection and the best poem that reflects the LGBTQ community. In addition, it publishes selected work that best matches its mission. To date it has published over 100 works in print and ebook format. Its books are available via Ingram, Follett and various internet outlets, among them Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
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