Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction

Ploughshares is pleased to present Kaitlyn Greenidge with the tenth annual Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction for her story “Doers of the Word,” which appeared in the Summer 2020 issue, guest-edited by Celeste Ng. The $2,500 prize, sponsored by acclaimed writer, former guest editor, longtime patron, and member of the Ploughshares advisory board Alice Hoffman, honors a short story published in the journal in the previous year.

Of the story, Hoffman writes: “Kaitlyn Greenidge’s imaginative and stirring blend of history, magic, and family bonds begins with a riveting narrative told from a young girl’s point of view, centering on her mother, who appears to bring a dead man back to life. Beautifully written, this tale about life and death, freedom and love is unforgettable.”

“Doers of the Word”—an excerpt from Greenidge’s newly released novel, Libertie (Algonquin Books)—follows a daughter, Libertie, named for her long-dead father’s greatest desire, and a mother, respected doctor Cathy, with the power to grant it. Cathy’s care brings an enslaved man, Mr. Ben, who arrives at her door in a casket, back from the brink of death, allowing him to flee, silent as death, to the North. Inspired by the true story of Susan Smith McKinney Steward, the first Black female doctor in New York, “Doers of the Word” is, as Greenidge says, an “exploration in the limits of care.” Like Susan, Cathy is the daughter of a wealthy pig farmer, motivated to pursue medicine by the death of her sibling. And, like Susan, she has suffered the loss of her husband, a pastor. Libertie sees her mother living within herself; having lost so much, she leaves her daughter to peer in from the outside—giving herself to her patients in a way she can’t to her child. “Doers of the Word” asks: What does it feel like to fall outside the care of your mother?

According to Greenidge, this story, and the novel that grew out of it, is rooted in matters of caring: grace, compassion, and mercy. It examines whom we grant these things to and from whom we withhold them. Cathy withholds from her daughter, even as she prides herself on Libertie’s beauty and mind. She withholds from others in the silence of their home, and in her abject refusal of vulnerability. Notably, Cathy’s denial of Libertie exists alongside her ability to grant liberty to enslaved people. This contrast, this story, is an inquiry into freedom; Greenidge writes: “I am super interested in the question of freedom—how, in the American context, freedom is understood as the right to dominate. If we let that go, what does true liberation look like?” The answer seems to be different for Mr. Ben, for Cathy, and for Libertie. Mr. Ben is liberated by Cathy’s caring, and Libertie is trapped by its absence.

Greenidge’s debut novel, We Love You, Charlie Freeman (Algonquin Books), was one of The New York Times Critics’ Top 10 Books of 2016. Her writing has appeared in Vogue, Glamour, The Wall Street Journal, Elle.com, Buzzfeed, Transition Magazine, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Believer, and American Short Fiction, among other outlets. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Whiting Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and others. She was a contributing editor for Lenny Letter and is currently a contributing writer for The New York Times. Libertie was published in March.