Psychiatrist’s short stories win Drue Heinz Literature Prize
A North Carolina psychiatrist who has been a writer since childhood is the recipient of the 2021 Drue Heinz Literature Prize.
“Now You Know It All,” a short story collection by Joanna Pearson, will be published next fall by the University of Pittsburgh Press. The author also receives a $15,000 cash award. “Now You Know It All” is a line from a William Butler Yeats poem, “In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markievicz.”
The Drue Heinz Literature Prize was established in 1981 by the late philanthropist and socialite Drue Heinz, publisher of “The Paris Review” and cofounder of Ecco Press. She was the third wife of H. J. Heinz II, heir to the food and condiment fortune.
Ms. Pearson lives in Carrboro, near Chapel Hill, with her husband, Matthew Smith, and two daughters, Josie, 7, and Ellie, 3.
The eldest of four children, she grew up in Shelby, N.C. Her father was a doctor and her mother an elementary teacher. Her short stories are set in small Southern towns and have “a kernel of dissatisfaction or mystery in play,” she said.
“I like a little bit of creepiness. That’s what I’m attracted to as a reader as well,” Ms. Pearson said, adding that her favorite “creepy writers” are Shirley Jackson and Flannery O’Connor.
As an undergraduate college student, Ms. Pearson studied poetry and fiction but also prepared to be a doctor, enrolling at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 2004. Then, she interrupted her professional studies to focus on poetry. Taking a break from medical studies to write poetry for two years is not the norm, she said, but “my dean was totally supportive.”
“There’s a great creative writing program at Hopkins,” she said.
To keep her toe in medicine, she worked at an outpatient medical clinic. She earned a master’s degree in poetry in 2009. After finishing her medical degree in 2010, she did an internship and residency at the school’s psychiatry department.
“After I finished residency and the birth of my older daughter, I didn’t want to write poetry anymore,” Ms. Pearson said.
Last year, Acre Books published her collection of short stories, “Every Human Love,” a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Awards, the Foreword Indies Awards and the Janet Heidinger Prize for Fiction.
“Good poems and good short stories are probably more similar than they are different,” the author said. “There’s a shape to them. There’s a turn and a moment of revelation in a short story or a revision of one’s previous understanding. There’s that attention to language and image. A part of me wishes I had started writing fiction sooner.”