above: the winner!

Press release from Michael Moorcock:

FIRST AMERICAN TO WIN THE JACK TREVOR STORY MEMORIAL CUP

The committee awarding the Jack Trevor Story Memorial Cup for humorous writing this year presented the cup to an American for the first time.

Meeting at its traditional venue, L’Horizon, rue Saint Placide, Paris, the Committee consisting of Iain Sinclair (UK), Michael Moorcock (US/UK), Lili Sztajn (France), Jeff VanderMeer (USA), Fabrice Colin (France), Lisa Tuttle (Scotland) and Sebastian Doubinski (Denmark) unanimously agreed to give the Jack Trevor Story Memorial Cup, together with a $1,000 prize to Howard Waldrop, author of Them Bones, The Texas/Israeli War and several collections of short stories including Dream Factories and Radio Pictures and Heart of Whiteness. (All available from Amazon)

The Cup was presented to the winner by Michael Moorcock during a special ceremony at the Doubletree Inn Hotel, Austin, Texas on Friday 14th August 2009.

The usual conditions will apply: that the money be spent within two weeks and the recipient have nothing to show for it by the end of that period. This recalls Story’s remark to a bankruptcy judge when asked what had happened to money from his films The Trouble with Harry and Live Now, Pay Later: “You know how it is, judge. Two hundred or two thousand. It always lasts a week to a fortnight.”

A regular columnist for The Guardian during the 1960s and 1970s, Story also contributed to Punch, The Evening Standard, Sexton Blake Library, The Listener, The New Statesman, New Worlds and many other journals. Milton Keynes’ Writer in Residence, he wrote series for TV and radio as well as many other films and died in 1991 at his typewriter, having written ‘THE END’ to his final novel Shabby Weddings.

Previous winners of the JTS Memorial Cup include Fred Normandale and Steve Aylett.