Essayist, playwright and novelist Hilary Sloin died on June 11, 2019 at her home in Ashfield, Massachusetts of an apparent suicide. She studied creative writing at Marlboro College and received a graduate degree in playwriting from NYU. She was 55 years old and a co-owner Stray Dog Antiques. In 2014, Sloin’s only complete novel, Art on Fire, received the Stonewall-Barbara Gittings Literature Award from the American Library Association GLBT Roundtable. Art on Fire, an immensely creative fictional biography of the painter Francesca de Silva (also a creation of Sloin) additionally received the Bywater Prize for Fiction. Sloin claimed that the Amherst Book and Plow competition mistakenly awarded Art and Fire its non-fiction prize. One final chance to interact with Sloin’s sense of humor and creativity, see if you can locate any information on this competition. Use the “reply” section below to enter anything you find about this award or about the competition itself.
The Amherst Book and Plough competition was (or is — I didn’t google because I know this to be true) an actually competition. And Hlary really did enter the work from the manuscript in the fiction catagory only to have it win in nonfiction. She found it highly annoying at the time, and so I love seeing the way she used that mistake. Appreciating your tribute and missing Hilary and her work. Susan
Susan, thanks for your reply! I loved Art of Fire, and I really enjoyed meeting her when she won the Stonewall Book Award. She was such a wonderful person!