Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction

Ploughshares is pleased to present Victor LaValle with the seventh annual Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction for his short story “Spectral Evidence,” which appeared in the Summer 2017 issue, guest-edited by Stewart O’Nan. The $1,000 prize, awarded by acclaimed writer and Ploughshares board member and former guest editor Alice Hoffman, honors the best piece of fiction published in the journal during the previous year. Of the piece, she says, “Victor LaValle’s glorious, surprising story, ‘Spectral Evidence,’ is a one-of-a-kind beauty, daring in every way.”

In “Spectral Evidence,” a psychic sees a vision of her daughter Sonia, who died by suicide a year ago. When a young girl comes into the psychic’s shop looking for answers about whether there is something after death, the psychic must finally confront her grief.

Through the psychic’s visions of her daughter, “Spectral Evidence” explores the power of regret and mourning and the way they can feel eternal. “I tried to bring it all to some turn that would offer hope or solace, but I wasn’t in that state of mind.” LaValle points to Jamaica Kincaid’s The Autobiography of My Mother and the unflinching approach of that book as inspiration.

Although there are always autobiographical elements to LaValle’s fiction, “Spectral Evidence” is one where he feels he hid the facts the least. In 2016, LaValle’s brother passed away. The boys were raised separately and had an on-again, off-again relationship; the tenuous relationship between the psychic and her daughter mirrors that of the brothers. “As I sat down to write the story, I was grappling with grief and guilt about the ways I’d failed him as a brother, as a human being,” he says. “I wanted to write about a person who couldn’t escape her ghost and who didn’t feel she deserved to.”

LaValle often employs fantastical elements in his writing. His most recent novel, The Changeling, follows a father through an enchanted world within New York City as he tries to find his wife, who has disappeared. The Changeling was named one of the 10 Best Books of the Year by Time magazine, USA Today, and The New York Post, and was listed as a notable book of the year by The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, and many others.

LaValle currently teaches writing at Columbia University. He is the author of a short story collection, four novels, two novellas, and the comic book DESTROYER. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers Award, a Shirley Jackson Award, and the Key to Southeast Queens, among other awards.

Next from LaValle is a trio of novellas, the first of which is a Western taking place during Montana’s homesteading days and focusing on the women who trekked to that barren territory alone.