Anna Caritj, novelist and Creative Writing Professor, won the Sewanee Review’s Andrew Lytle Prize for best short story. Her winning story, “Ugly Sister,” appeared in the summer issue of the journal. “I’m thrilled that ‘Ugly Sister’ found a home at the Sewanee Review,” Caritj said, “and that the editors found it worthy of the Andrew Lytle Prize. Adam and Eric have always been a delight to work with, and I’m just so grateful for their belief and support.”
Each year, the Sewanee Review honors the best work published in the magazine’s pages with five awards, including the Lytle Prize. Named for distinguished former editor Andrew Lytle, the prize honors the best short story that appeared in the journal from the previous year.
Of her prize-winning story, Caritj said, “I’m always inspired by places — houses, usually — but ‘Ugly Sister’ was, perhaps more than any story I’ve ever written, inspired by weather and landscape. Patagonia is beautiful and windy and ravishing, and I wrote so many versions of this story trying to capture that landscape and how it might manifest internally, inside a character who has never traveled much or explored her wilder parts.” You can read her prize-winning story on the Sewanee Review’s website.
Caritj currently teaches classes in both the undergraduate Creative Writing Program, and the Creative Writing MFA Program at Boise State University. She holds a BA from the University of Virginia, where she studied Spanish and English literature, and an MFA in creative writing from Hollins University. The author of the novel, “Leda and the Swan,” her short stories appear in Blackbird, Mid-American Review, and The Sewanee Review. She grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, where much of her work takes place. She has lived, most recently, in Texas, California, New Mexico, and Florida.