The Stone Award

The Stone Award for Literary Achievement honors a major American author who has created a body of critically acclaimed literary work and has been—in the tradition of creative writing at OSU—a dedicated mentor to succeeding generations of young writers.

OSU alum Patrick F. Stone ('74) and his wife, Vicki, established the prize to spotlight what they see as one of OSU’s best kept secrets: the MFA Program in Creative Writing, which has a growing reputation for its emphasis on mentoring students, building community and reaching out to underserved populations—including at-risk youth and military veterans. The Stones’ $600,000 commitment has allowed OSU to award prizes in 2012, 2014, 2016, 2019, and 2021 and will continue to provide award funding through an endowment. The honorarium for the award is $20,000, making the Stone Prize one of the most substantial awards for literary achievement offered by any university in the country.

2024 Stone Award Winner Robin Wall Kimmerer

Robin Wall Kimmerer

Best-selling author and scientist Robin Wall Kimmerer is recipient of the 2024 Stone Award for Literary Achievement. The Stone Award recognizes major American authors with bodies of critically acclaimed work that influence multiple generations of writers, readers, and thinkers. Past recipients include writer and cartoonist Lynda Barry in 2021, novelist Colson Whitehead in 2019, and poet Rita Dove in 2016.

Robin Wall Kimmerer's "Returning the Gift: the nature writer in a time of climate catastrophe"

Kimmerer visited Oregon State’s main campus this spring to meet with students and deliver a public reading. Her reading took place at 7pm on Friday, May 17 at OSU’s new Patricia Valian Reser Center for the Creative Arts (PRAx).

“In keeping with our previous Stone Award recipients, Robin Wall Kimmerer’s selection points to the crucial role that telling stories, and teaching our students to tell stories, plays in the College of Liberal Arts,” notes Larry Rodgers, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts. “Like Kimmerer, we are committed to addressing the most challenging and fraught issues around residing together as humans on a precious, fragile planet.”

Kimmerer’s book, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of Plants, has occupied a spot on the New York Times’ Best Seller List for 181 consecutive weeks. 

Her first book, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses, is published by Oregon State University Press and is their catalog’s all-time best-selling title. 

“Robin Wall Kimmerer is not merely a writer; she's a scientist, a storyteller and a philosopher. I can't think of another author who examines the relationships between human and landscape with such wisdom and clarity—not to mention delight!” says Elena Passarello, Associate Professor and Director of the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program. “Welcoming her, and watching her interact with our students and community, will be the highlight of my year.”

During her visit to OSU, Kimmerer met with undergraduate and graduate students in the School of Writing, Literature, and Film. “This is also an opportunity to connect with students and faculty across the OSU community, particularly those in the natural sciences, who recognize the essential role of skilled writing when engaging urgent environmental issues,” adds Tim Jensen, Director of SWLF and Associate Professor of Rhetoric. “The shortest distance between two people is a story, and Kimmerer’s writing excels at bringing people together.”

Kimmerer is an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawotami Nation, the founder and director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment, and a State University of New York Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology.  

The Stone Award is one of the largest prizes of its kind given by an American university. It was established in 2011 by Patrick and Vicki Stone with a gift to the OSU Foundation to spotlight OSU's Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program in the School of Writing, Literature, and Film. Past award recipients also include Joyce Carol Oates and Tobias Wolff.

For more information, please contact Tim Jensen, Director of the School of Writing, Literature, and Film at tim.jensen@oregonstate.edu or 541-737-1634.

Past Recipients of the Stone Award for Lifetime Literary Achievement:

Lynda Barry has worked as a painter, cartoonist, writer, illustrator, playwright, editor, commentator and teacher and found they are very much alike. The New York Times has described Barry as “among this country’s greatest conjoiners of words and images, known for plumbing all kinds of touchy subjects in cartoons, comic strips and novels, both graphic and illustrated.” She earned a degree from The Evergreen State College during its early experimental period (1974-78), studying with painter and writing teacher Marilyn Frasca. Frasca’s questions about the nature of images and the role they play in day-to-day living have guided Barry’s work ever since.

In 1979 while pursuing a career as a painter, Barry began drawing a weekly comic strip incorporating stories considered to be incompatible with comics at the time. Stories, as Barry puts it, “that had a lot of trouble in them.” Widely credited with expanding the literary, thematic and emotional range of American comics, Barry’s seminal comic strip, Ernie Pook’s Comeek, ran in alternative newspapers across North America for thirty years.

Barry has authored 21 books, worked as a commentator for NPR, and had a regular monthly feature in Esquire, Mother Jones Magazine, Mademoiselle, and Salon. She created an album-length spoken word collection of stories called The Lynda Barry Experience, and was a frequent guest on the Late Show with David Letterman.  She adapted her first novel, The Good Times are Killing Me, into a long running off-Broadway play, since published by Samuel French and performed throughout North America.  Her book One! Hundred! Demons! was chosen as the first-year all-read title  at Stanford University.  Her novel Cruddy was called “a work of terrible beauty” by the New York Times, and has been translated into French, Italian, German, Catalan and Hebrew. Her new book which is about the creative process with a how-to for comics titled Making Comics (Drawn & Quarterly, September 10, 2019).

Associate Dean of the Honors College Susan Jackson Rodgers Introduces Lynda Barry on April 29th, 2021

Susan Jackson Rodgers Introduction to 2021 Stone Award Winner Lynda Barry

All events are free and open to the public

For accommodations relating to a disability or to request this information in a different format, please contact 541-737-2623.

About Words: Episode 3 - Colson Whitehead

The Stone Award for Literary Achievement, created by a generous gift from Vicki and Patrick Stone '74, honors a major American author who has created a body of critically acclaimed literary work and has been - in the tradition of creative writing at OSU - a dedicated mentor to succeeding generations of young writers. The 2019 winner is Pullitzer Prize winning author, Colson Whitehead.

 

Colson Whitehead - Stone Award Presentation, Reading and Q&A
7:30 p.m.
Monday, April 1, 2019
Oregon State University Campus
The LaSells Stewart Center, Austin Auditorium
875 SW 26th Street, Corvallis, Oregon

Free and open to the public
Book Signing to follow program

 

Colson Whitehead is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Underground Railroad (an Oprah’s Book Club selection and winner of the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize), The Noble Hustle, Zone One, Sag Harbor, The Intuitionist, John Henry Days, Apex Hides the Hurt, and one collection of essays, The Colossus of New York.

Colson Whitehead’s reviews, essays, and fiction have appeared in a number of publications, such as the New York Times, The New Yorker, New York Magazine, Harper’s and Granta.
He has received a MacArthur Fellowship, A Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers Award, the Dos Passos Prize, a fellowship at the Cullman Center for Scholars and W+riters, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for John Henry Days.

He has taught at the University of Houston, Columbia University, Brooklyn College, Hunter College, New York University, Princeton University, Wesleyan University, and been a Writer-in-Residence at Vassar College, the University of Richmond, and the University of Wyoming.

He lives in New York City.

The Stone Award is one of the largest prizes of its kind given by an American university. Past recipients include Joyce Carol Oates, Tobias Wolff and Rita Dove.

Read more about Colson Whitehead.

The Stone Award for Literary Achievement, created by a generous gift from Vicki and Patrick Stone '74, honors a major American author who has created a body of critically acclaimed literary work and has been - in tradition of creative writing at OSU - a dedicated mentor to succeeding generations of young writers.

OSU alum Patrick F. Stone ('74) and his wife, Vicki, established the prize to spotlight what they see as one of OSU's best kept secrets: the MFA Program in Creative Writing, which has a growing reputation for its emphasis on mentoring students, building community and reaching out to underserved populations - including at-risk youth and military veterans.  The Stones' $600,000 committment has allowed OSU to award prizes in 2012, 2014 and 2016, and will continue to provide award funding through an endowment.  The honorarium for the award is $20,000, making the Stone Prize one of the most substantial awards for lifetime literary achievement offered by any university in the country.

Recipients of the Stone Literary Award give readings, master classes and lectures in both Corvallis and Portland, highlighting the value of creative communications in contemporary American culture.  In conjunction with the prize, an "Everybody Reads" program features a selected book by the writer, wtih events at libraries, book clubs and independent bookstores. 

The Stone Award for Lifetime Literary Achievement, created by a generous gift from Vicki and Patrick Stone '74, honors a major American author who has created a body of critically acclaimed literary work and has been - in the tradition of creative writing at OSU - a dedicated mentor to succeeding generations of young writers. The 2016 winner is acclaimed poet, Rita Dove.

Rita Dove - Stone Award Presentation, Reading and Q&A
7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 14
Oregon State University Campus, CH2M Hill Alumni Center Ballroom
725 SW 26th Street, Corvallis, Oregon
Free and open to the public
Book Signing to follow program

Rita Dove - Interview with readings
7:30 p.m. Friday, April 15
First Congregational United Church of Christ
1126 SW Park Avenue, Portland, Oregon
Free and open to the public
Reception and book signing to follow program

Read about Rita's visit to Roosevelt High School in Portland, Oregon

Rita Dove served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1993 to 1995 and Poet Laureate of Virginia from 2004 to 2006. She has received numerous accolades, including three lifetime achievement awards, 25 honorary doctorates and the 1987 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. Dove is the only poet to receive both the National Humanities Medal (1996) and the National Medal of the Arts (2011).

A member of the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Rita Dove holds the chair of Commonwealth Professor of English at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where she lives with her husband, the writer Fred Viebahn. They have a grown daughter, Aviva Dove-Viebahn.

The biennial Stone Award is one of the largest prizes of its kind given by an American university. Past recipients include Joyce Carol Oates and Tobias Wolff.

Read more about Rita Dove.

On May 21, 2014, Tobias Wolff was presented with the Stone Award at the Portland Art Museum, where he gave an on-stage interview conducted by Professor Keith Scribner, followed by a reception and book signing.  Wolff gave a free public reading, lecture and book signing the following day on the OSU campus.

Tobias Wolff’s books include the memoirs This Boy’s Life and In Pharaoh’s Army; the short novel The Barracks Thief; four collections of stories, In The Garden of the North American Martyrs, Back in the World, The Night in Question, and Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories; and the novel Old School. His work is translated widely and has received prestigious awards, including the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Rea Award for Excellence in the Short Story, the Fairfax Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature, the PEN/Malamud Award for Achievement in the Short Story, and the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is currently the Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor in the Humanities at Stanford.

The $20,000 Stone Award—one of the largest given by an American university for lifetime literary achievement—was established in 2011 by a generous gift from Vicki and Patrick Stone ’74.  The award’s inaugural recipient in 2012 was Joyce Carol Oates. The Stones established the biennial prize to spotlight Oregon State’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, a program known for mentoring students, building community and reaching out to underserved populations.

Joyce Carol Oates, celebrated author and National Book Award winner, received Oregon State University’s inaugural Stone Award for Lifetime Literary Achievement in May 2012.

The biennial award is given to a major American author who has created a body of critically acclaimed work and who has – in the tradition of creative writing at OSU – been a dedicated mentor to young writers. The honorarium for the award is $20,000, making the Stone Prize one of the most substantial awards for lifetime literary achievement offered by any university in the country.

The award was presented to Oates at a special event on May 10, 2012 at the Portland Art Museum Fields Ballroom. OSU Distinguished Professor of English Tracy Daugherty conducted an on-stage interview with Oates. A reception and book signing followed.

“Joyce Carol Oates is that rare literary figure who, over the course of an extraordinarily productive literary career, has also given generous attention and energy to young writers,” said Marjorie Sandor, former director of the Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing at OSU. “Unflagging in her support for literary magazines and presses, she has enriched and enlivened our nation’s cultural life.” Oates is the author of books in several genres including “Give Me Your Heart: Tales of Mystery and Suspense” (2011) and “In Rough Country” (2010). Her newest novel, the psychological thriller “Mudwoman,” was released in March 2012.

She published her first book in 1963 and has since published more than 50 novels, as well as many volumes of short stories, poetry, literary criticism and essays. Her novel “them” (1969)

won the National Book Award, and her novels “Black Water” (1992), “What I Lived For” (1994), and “Blonde” (2000) were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. In 2010, Oates received the National Humanities Medal. 

The Stone Literary Award was established in 2011 with a $600,000 commitment from OSU College of Liberal Arts alumnus Patrick Stone (’74). Stone and his wife, Vicki, chose to endow the literary prize in order to acknowledge the growing national reputation of OSU’s creative writing program, as well as its commitment to mentoring students, building community, and reaching out to underserved populations including at-risk youth and veterans. 

In addition to the Portland event, Oates gave a free public lecture in Corvallis on May 9 on the OSU campus.