The $5,000 literary prize isn’t the first award that Lutes, a Center for Cartoon Studies faculty member, has won for his work. In summer 2018, he received the prestigious Inkpot Award at Comic-Con International in San Diego, as Pamela Polston noted in a 2018 Seven Days cover story. She described the three-volume Berlin, which combines history and fiction to chronicle the rise of German fascism between the world wars, as “an astonishing accomplishment that represents a grand vision and more than 20 years’ work.”
“I felt grateful and honored for having my book nominated for the VBA, but the last thing I expected was to actually win,” Lutes wrote in an email. “To work in solitude on a project for 22 years, and then to receive a standing ovation for that work from a roomful of strangers, was an unimaginable and deeply humbling experience. I could barely keep it together at the podium. It was a night I will never forget.”
Besides the cash, Lutes will take home an award sculpture crafted by Luciana Frigerio, a Norwich artist who repurposed copies of The Best American Short Stories of the Century into a one-of-a-kind trophy.
Berlin was selected by a team of nine judges from among 10 finalists for the award, ranging from poetry to nonfiction to children’s literature. Among them were The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai (also a National Book Award finalist); The Season of Styx Malone by Kekla Magoon (also a Coretta Scott King Honor Book and winner of the 2019 Boston Globe—Horn Book Award); and The Animal One Thousand Miles Long: Seven Lengths of Vermont and Other Adventures, by Seven Days contributor Leath Tonino.
Vermont College of Fine Arts interim president Leslie Ward spoke at the gala; she was appointed last summer to succeed founding president and novelist Thomas Christopher Greene, who will return to the college’s faculty in 2020 following a sabbatical.
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