Copyright in Fictional Characters: Can I Have Don Draper Make a Cameo Appearance in My Novel?

I'm throwing a dinner party in my novel. My guest list includes Don Draper, James Bond, Jack Ryan, Scarlett O'Hara, Dolores Haze a/k/a Lolita, and Elizabeth Bennett.  I don't expect my guests to say or do anything at my fictional party.  The question is:  Can they simply show up at the dinner table without my infringing the copyrights of Matthew Weiner, Ian Fleming, Tom Clancy, Margaret Mitchell, Vladimir Nabokov, and Jane Austen or their heirs?

Before trying to answer that (somewhat surprisingly complicated) question, let me introduce you to one of my guests.  Jack Ryan is known to millions of readers as a tough former Second Lieutenant in the Marines, a onetime CIA agent, and ultimately President of the United States. He appeared as a character in Tom Clancy's first novel, The Hunt for Red October, which was published in hardcover in October 1984 by the U.S. Naval Institute Press, a small publisher that was then primarily issuing works on naval history.  Ryan later reappeared in many other Clancy novels.  But did you know that Jack Ryan was the subject of allegedly infringing use by none other than . . . Tom Clancy?

Clancy was a true unknown when he wrote Hunt for Red October -- an insurance agent who daydreamed of becoming a novelist.  The New York Times tells the back story here.  Prior to Red October, Clancy had published no fiction, but he had published a non-fiction article on the MX missile in the Naval Institute's Proceedings magazine.  So when he completed Red October he offered the novel to the Naval Institute; its headquarters were, after all, just a few miles away from his home near Annapolis.

The Naval Institute had published a few previous novels on naval themes and offered Clancy its standard contract, which included an assignment of the copyright to the publisher -- not uncommon for academic books at the time, but rare for novels.  Clancy happily signed the agreement and received a $5,000 advance.  Red October surprised both author and publisher when it turned out to be a colossal bestseller, selling many millions of copies (after Ronald Reagan praised it as "the perfect yarn").

For his second book, Clancy jumped ship and signed with a big New York publisher.  But the earlier copyright assignment to the Naval Institute almost torpedoed the new book.  Why?  Because the copyright assignment arguably carried with it the rights to the characters in Red October.  The Naval Institute commenced an arbitration claiming that, as the Times explained, the Naval Institute's copyright ownership in Red October gave it "a continuing interest in the Jack Ryan character, and it should therefore receive a percentage of the profits from Patriot Games and The Cardinal of the Kremlin and from any films or miniseries made of them."

The Red October arbitration was settled on undisclosed terms.  But the point is that fully drawn literary characters are generally subject to copyright protection, and the copyright owner will often be able to prevent others from using the character in other works without permission.  But the legal principles are by no means simple.

There are two separate but related questions here.  First:  Is a particular character protected by copyright?  Second:  Is the particular use made by someone other than the copyright owner infringing?

Here is what famed judge Learned Hand said 80 years ago in Nichols v. Universal Pictures Corp. about distinguishing between literary characters that are and are not protected by copyright:

If Twelfth Night were copyrighted, it is quite possible that a second comer might so closely imitate Sir Toby Belch or Malvolio as to infringe, but it would not be enough that for one of his characters he cast a riotous knight who kept wassail to the discomfort of the household, or a vain and foppish steward who became amorous of his mistress. These would be no more than Shakespeare’s ‘ideas’ in the play, as little capable of monopoly as Einstein’s Doctrine of Relativity, or Darwin’s theory of the Origin of Species. It follows that the less developed the characters, the less they can be copyrighted; that is the penalty an author must bear for marking them too indistinctly.

Judge Hand's analysis still holds true today.  As copyright guru Paul Goldstein puts it:

Fully realized characters in literature are little different from fully defined personalities in daily life, and it is no surprise that the test of protectibility that courts apply to literary characters is closely akin to the criterion that individuals apply in daily life to determine whether they in truth know someone. A literary character can be said to have a distinctive personality, and thus to be protectible, when it has been delineated to the point at which its behavior is relatively predictable so that, when placed in a new plot situation, it will react in ways that are at once distinctive and unsurprising.

Every reader of Catcher in the Rye comes away with the feeling that she knows Holden Caulfield, and so it was unsurprising to many copyright lawyers when, a little over a year ago, a court enjoined publication an unauthorized sequel by Fredrick Colting that told the story of a 76-year-old Holden Caulfield.  Here is the appeals court decision in that procedurally complicated case, which ended in a settlement prohibiting further publication in the United States and Canada.  Holden Caulfield is, in Goldstein's phrase, "fully delineated," and like other fully delineated characters (e.g., James Bond, as the court ruled in this lawsuit) he is surely protected by copyright, while, by contrast, sketchily defined, stock characters may not be (as the court found in this case).  (See also this account of a 1998 lawsuit to block publication of Lo's Diary "a distaff version of Nabokov's Lolita.")

But the fact that a character is copyright protected does not necessarily mean that every use of his/her fictional persona is an infringement.  A second work that invokes a copyright-protected character must copy some significant amount of expression in order to be an infringement.  The mere mention of the name of a copyrighted character ought not to be a copyright infringement because names, standing alone, are not copyrightable. (But see the discussion of trademark and unfair competition law below.)  A copyright infringement occurs only when a quantum of protectible expression has been copied, and the copying is not excused by the doctrine of fair use.  (Note that this post deals primarily with openly acknowledged use of another writer's character, not the situation where an author merely borrows certain traits or characteristics from a character.)

With this principle in mind, it would seem to follow that a fleeting appearance of another writer's fictional character as a dinner guest in my novel should not qualify as a copyright infringement.  However, as soon as I start to make Jack Ryan or Don Draper talk like, act like, or look like Jack Ryan or Don Draper in my novel I may be treading on thinner ice.  And if I make Jack Ryan or Don Draper an important character in my book, I'm begging for trouble.

There are several other important considerations here.  First, there are some copyright owners who, regardless of viability of their claims, will not hesitate to sue me at the drop of a hat if I use their characters in any way without obtaining permission (which they will never give me).  There is, in other words, a practical risk in inviting other writers' characters to my fictional dinner party, even if those characters keep their mouths shut and do nothing.  Frankly, it may not be worth it to me to take any risk of provoking a lawsuit arising from my imaginary soiree, even if I have the better part of the argument on copyright.  It's always safer to invite some nameless characters of my own creation.

(And Elizabeth Bennett can still attend the dinner, since she has been in the public domain for a long, long time.  Seth Grahame Smith, author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, is surely thankful for that.)

Second, the owner of the rights in a famous fictional character will also likely seek to invoke other legal theories -- particularly trademark and unfair competition laws -- when trying to protect her characters from my unauthorized use.  If the name of a character has acquired secondary meaning -- i.e., if the name is sufficiently well known that readers associate it exclusively with a particular author's work -- then the owner may be able to claim that my unauthorized use of the name creates confusion among readers, who may mistakenly conclude that my use of the name is authorized, approved, or licensed by the owner.  Confusion as to source, authorization, or  endorsement is the essence of an unfair competition claim. There might be ways to get around the trademark infringement/unfair competition argument, particularly with the use of prominent disclaimers that make very clear that Matthew Weiner has not authorized me to mention Don Draper.  But, still, the unfair competition argument is a complicating factor when referencing the characters of others.

Concern about characters as trademarks may -- or may not -- have figured into some of the choices made in The Wind Done Gone, by Alice Randall.  Randall's novel was, of course, a reinterpretation of the characters and events in Gone with the Wind.  Scarlet O'Hara appears in the novel, but she is referred to only as "Other."  And Rhett Butler is called "R."  Place names, such as Tara, were also altered.  That said, Scarlett and Rhett are "fully delineated" characters whose fictional lives are continually referenced (albeit not by their full names) in Randall's novel.  Small wonder then that the owner of the copyright in GWTW sued Randall's publisher, Houghton Mifflin.  As you can see from the complaint, the plaintiff alleged both copyright infringement and unfair competition, claiming, among other things, that the characters were both copyright-protected and had acquired secondary meaning.  It was a hard-fought case, with an inconclusive ending.  The trial court found that The Wind Done Gone was likely a violation of copyright and issued a preliminary injunction.  But the appeals court, in this decision, found on First Amendment grounds that it was improper to preliminarily enjoin publication of TWDG in part because Randall's work could qualify as a "parody" of GWTW.  But the appeals court did not rule out the possibility that the publisher of TWDG could ultimately be liable to the copyright owner for money damages.  The case settled before there was any final decision on a host of interesting legal issues.

These days, the unauthorized use of characters occurs all of the time in the context of fan fiction, which typically involves inventing new stories using familiar characters from literature, comic books, movies, or television programs.  An entire subculture has built up around fan fiction, and recently FanFiction.Net was the 747th most trafficked website in the United States.  Although each work must be judged on its own, suffice it to say that, if the issue ever reached a court, many works of fan fiction would be deemed derivative works that infringe upon the characters and stories on which they are based.  Chilling Effects has a great Q&A on the legal issues relating to fan fiction.  And the Wikipeida entry on the legality of fan fiction also makes for interesting reading.  Georgetown Law School professor Rebecca Tushnet wrote an excellent law review article on the subject.  And here is a list of other law review pieces discussing the legal issues.

Fan fiction writers have two things going for them.  First, as discussed in some of the references above, many (but by no means all) copyright owners have turned a blind eye to infringing fan fiction, on the theory that they do not want to alienate some of their most enthusiastic followers. Second, fan fiction writers rarely seek to profit from their work, which is helpful in arguing the defense of fair use, but by no means provides immunity from an infringement claim.  In short, writers of fan fiction, who publish their work on the web or elsewhere, should be aware that they are taking some degree of legal risk, unless, like Pride and Prejudice and Vampires, their works are based upon public domain sources.

So can I have Don Draper make a cameo appearance in my novel?  As you can see, the answer is a thoroughly equivocal "it depends."  A writer contemplating using the characters of another writer would well-advised to seek out the counsel of an experienced intellectual property lawyer.  (See this prior post on free and low-cost resources.)  If you're publishing with an established house, you should discuss your particular use of other writers' characters with your editor and the in-house attorney.

There are several helpful discussions on the web concerning copyright in fictional characters, including this one by Denver lawyer Lloyd Rich, this one by California lawyer Ivan Hoffman, and this by Phoenix lawyer Jasmina Zecevic Richter.

Does the DNA in a Bacterium Infringe the Copyright in James Joyce's "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man"?

That wonderfully oddball question was posed to me yesterday by author Mike Mullin.  (See his entertaining tweets here.)

I admit that initially I didn't have the foggiest idea what Mike was talking about.  But when I read the link in his tweet it all became clear.

It seems that, in May 2010, the American biologist Craig Venter synthesized the genome of a microbe and implanted a snippet of its DNA into a DNA-free cell of another species.  As Carl Zimmer exclaimed in awe in a blog post on Discover magazine's website:

And that…that thing…can grow and divide. It’s hard to say whether this is “life from scratch,” because the boundary between such a thing and ordinary life (and non-life) is actually blurry . . . 

Here, from The Guardian, is a more detailed discussion of the extraordinary and controversial science -- arguably the first synthetic life form. And here is Venter himself talking about the breakthrough.  But for our purposes, the funky thing is that, as Zimmer reported in a later post, Ventner's synthetic cell:

carries a line from James Joyce, inscribed in its DNA: “To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life.” . . . The scientists who produced the new synthetic cell copied the genome of a microbe, letter for letter, and then inserted the synthetic version into a host cell. To determine that their experiment worked, they needed a way to tell the genomes of their synthetic cells from the natural genomes that were their model. So they inserted “watermarks” into the artificial genome. These sequences of DNA (which spelled out the work of Joyce and others through the genetic code) sit in non-coding regions of the microbe’s DNA.

(Emphasis added.) What happened next, sounds like a satire of the James Joyce Estate's legendarily overzealous copyright policing.  As David Ewalt reported in his blog on Forbes.com, at a conference in Texas just last week:

Venter explained his team received a cease and desist letter from Joyce’s estate, saying that he’d used the Irish writer’s work without permission. ”We thought it fell under fair use,” said Venter.

In other words, the Joyce Estate evidently contended that a sequence of DNA in a bacterium infringed the copyright in Portrait of the Artist.  In his tweet, Mike Mullin asked -- doubtless tongue in cheek -- for an opinion on the viability of the Estate's copyright claim.  Here, Mike, is how the analysis might go, if one were to take this claim at all seriously:

The first question is whether Portrait of the Artist is copyright-protected at all.  Joyce's novel was first published in 1916.  It is therefore in the public domain in the United States, as are all works first published in 1922 or before.  (See this earlier post on copyright duration.)  Thus, as long as the literary bacterium was bioengineered in America and not distributed abroad, it would not be an infringing microbe.  Indeed, you can read the entirety of the book on the Project Gutenberg site. (It is, to say the least, quite wonderful.)  But keep in mind that the United Kingdom and the European Union calculate the duration of copyright in older works differently.  Copyright there (at least for works first published during an author's lifetime) endures for seventy years after the death of the author.  Since Joyce died in 1941, Portrait of the Artist is copyright-protected in those jurisdictions until January 1, 2012.  So if the creation and replication of the microbe took place in the UK in 2010, the Estate at least has a copyrighted work on which to base its claim.

By the way, this webpage maintained by Ohio State University and The International James Joyce Foundation tells you everything you could possibly want to know about the duration of Joyce's copyrights in various countries throughout the world.  Among the contributors to page are Robert Spoo and Carol Loeb Shloss.  I will come back to Spoo and Shloss in a minute.

I do not know where Venter's bacterium was created, but he is an American and his Institute is based in Maryland and California.  So odds are the copying occurred in a jurisdiction where Portrait of the Artist is in the public domain.  Don't sweat this, Dr. Venter.

But what if the new life form had been born in London?  There would still be a long line of hoops that the Estate would have to jump through to prove copyright infringement.  We will take it as a given that the microbe does in some sense "copy" a small portion of Joyce's novel, even though the copying cannot be seen by looking at the microbe under a microscope, but only in the print-out produced by the laboratory equipment that analyzes its genetic sequencing.  I am no authority on "fair dealing" -- the British equivalent of "fair use" (I leave any UK analysis to Emily Goodhand @CopyrightGirl) -- but under U.S. law, any claim of copyright infringement would, of course, be patently ridiculous.  The 14-word phrase from Joyce is so short that it would likely qualify as de mimimis copying -- i.e., too insignificant even to bother with applying the fair use analysis.  If the fair use factors under Section 107 of the Copyright Act were examined, Venter should surely win on at least three of the four.  In particular, a court would almost certainly find that Venter's use of Joyce's words was highly "transformative," which strongly favors a finding of fair use.  The "amount and substantiality of the portion used [by Venter] in relation to the copyrighted work" is trivial, to say the least. The effect of Venter's use on the market for Portrait of the Artist is non-existent.  Point, game, match -- Venter.

By the way, from what I read, as the bacteria replicate, the Joyce "quote" is gradually becoming more and more garbled, as mutation alters the gene sequencing.

But there is a serious point lurking here.  This is by no means the first time that the Joyce Estate has aggressively rattled its copyright sabres.  See this long and  fascinating New Yorker article.  And see  this summary by Kim Dian Gainer, which describes the "forced the excision of material from Brenda Maddox’s biography of Nora Joyce," the blocking of a "performance based upon a short story by Joyce that, ironically, was itself based upon a folk tale,"  the blocking of "live readings of Ulysses on the internet," and, in 2004, the threat of legal action to "derail[] exhibits and readings intended to be a part of the ReJoyce Dublin 2004 festival."

Most famously, the Estate objected to Carol Shloss's plans to quote from certain letters and other materials in her biography of Joyce's daughter, Lucia.  In response, Shloss filed a landmark declaratory judgment and "copyright misuse" lawsuit, in which she argued, among other things, that the Estate misused its copyrights in an effort to influence scholarly treatment of Joyce's works and life.  Robert Spoo was one of the attorneys who represented her.  (I told you I would return to Shloss and Spoo.) Ultimately, Shloss obtained a highly favorable settlement, and the Estate ended up paying $240,000 in attorneys' fees to Shloss and her counsel.

Based upon the letter accusing Venter of creating an infringing bacterium, the Estate does not appear to have been chastened by the outcome of the Shloss case.

Postscript: Following up on the Joyce/Venter controversy, New Yorker blogger Jeannie Venasco located several other accounts of literary quotations that have been encoded into DNA (evidently without attracting cease and desist letters).  She summarizes her research in this amusing post.

The Dead as Characters in Fiction: Shoeless Joe, J.D. Salinger, and J.R.R. Tolkien

On January 25 of this year, lawyers for the Estate of J.R.R. Tolkien sent a cease and desist letter to author Steve Hillard claiming that his novel Mirkwood violates the Estate's right of publicity in Tolkien's persona because (among other reasons) Hillard depicts Tolkien as a character in his book. The Estate cited Texas and Kentucky as examples of jurisdictions with statutes that extend the right of publicity to the dead.  Hillard responded by filing a preemptive lawsuit in federal court in Austin, Texas, seeking a declaration that his novel does not violate the Estate's rights.  Hillard's filing cites several good examples of recent novels by well-regarded writers that made prominent use of dead celebrities as characters, including Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates, featuring Marilyn Monroe as a character, The Hours by Michael Cunningham, featuring Virginia Woolf, and Underworld by Don DeLillo, featuring Frank Sinatra, Jackie Gleason, and J. Edgar Hoover, among others.  Early articles concerning the Mirkwood dispute appear here, here, and here.

I gather that the Estate may have other gripes about the allegedly "Tolkien-like" cover and the appearance of Tolkien's name in the subhead "A Novel About JRR Tolkien."  But it's not my purpose here to express a view on the merits of this particular lawsuit.  Instead, I'd like to voice my disaffection for the entire concept of a post-mortem right of publicity.

Briefly stated, the right of publicity prohibits the use of an individual's name or likeness (and, in some places, other elements of one's persona, such as one's voice, signature, etc.) in advertising or for "purposes of trade."  (RightofPublicity.com offers a good background discussion on the right; this good online whitepaper from the Kenyon & Kenyon law firm discusses the right in certain non-U.S. jurisdictions.)

There has been a lot of debate over the years about what falls within the ambit of "purposes of trade."  And there have been a fair number of lawsuits contending that "purposes of trade" include depicting an individual, without his consent (or the consent of his heirs), in a work of fiction, such as a novel or movie.  After all (the plaintiffs argue), the writer or producer is expecting to make money from the fictional work.  On the other hand, thankfully, many right of publicity statutes and court decisions explicitly recognize that there is a strong countervailing First Amendment interest in not curtailing all use of individuals' names in expressive works.

There has been a spate of recent right of publicity cases involving the use of real people in fictional works. (See this article from the American Bar Association summarizing recent developments.)  When brought on behalf of living individuals, most cases, like this one involving the television series CSI recently dismissed by an appeals court in California, tend to be yoked with a claim for libel, on the theory that not only does the plaintiff have a property right in his persona, but he has been falsely and disparagingly portrayed in the fictional work. (This raises the separate but related question of libel in fiction, which is the subject of this earlier post.)  However, when libel is not a factor, i.e., when the only claim is one based upon the right of publicity, in most cases -- but unfortunately not all -- the fiction writers have prevailed.  Still, there is no denying that this can be an unpredictable area of the law, as illustrated by the Tony Twist case.

But what about a right of publicity for the dead?  Remember, you can't libel the dead in the United States.  I, for one, see no compelling social benefit in bestowing a new property right on the heirs of dead celebrities, particularly when it is has too often been mischievously used by the living in an effort to suppress creative works, which are (and should be) entitled to robust protection under the First Amendment.  And yet approximately 19 states now recognize a post-mortem right of publicity.  (The laws, I might add, are entirely inconsistent with each other; some according protection for as few as 10 years after death, while Indiana and Oklahoma purport to extend protection for the astonishing term of 100 years!)

Back in the 1980s, I read the great baseball novel Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella.  The title character is the ghost of Shoeless Joe Jackson, who was, of course, one of the greatest hitters of all time and the most famous member of the Chicago White Sox team (or the Black Sox, as they have come to be called) that fixed the 1919 World Series.  The book also features a central character by the name of J.D. Salinger.

If you haven't read the book, you may know the story from the 1989 movie Field of Dreams, which is closely based on Kinsella's novel.  When I saw the movie, I was immediately struck by the fact that J.D. Salinger had vanished from the story and had been replaced by a totally fictional character named Terrence Mann.  I had a work-related reason to learn more about the reason for this dramatic change in the dramatis personae.  So I called around and finally managed to locate W.P. Kinsella, who was living at the time in White Rock, British Columbia, writing more novels.  (I must say he was uncommonly cordial and gracious to a young lawyer calling him completely out of the blue.)  I asked him:  "What happened to J.D. Salinger?"  He told me that the lawyers had said that Salinger, who in 1989 was still very much alive, had to be cut out of the movie version of Shoeless Joe.  The lawyers were worried that Salinger (who had recently pursued a highly publicized lawsuit to block publication of an unauthorized biography that quoted from his unpublished letters) might try to block the release of the movie as a violation of his right of publicity.  The lawyers decided they couldn't take that chance.

(By the way, as far as I know, Salinger and his lawyers never threatened legal action in connection with Field of Dreams; the Hollywood lawyers simply feared he might.  I could be wrong about that.  If anyone knows for sure, please post a comment or send me a message.)

In 1989, New York State Legislature was considering a bill that would have extended the "right of publicity" to the dead.  If the law had passed, the heirs of dead celebrities could sue if their illustrious ancestors' names were used in advertising for "purposes of trade," just as living celebrities could sue under New York law -- then and now.  I was asked to participate in a panel discussion with one of the sponsors of the New York legislation.  And the reason I had tracked down W.P. Kinsella was to support one of the points I wanted to make:

Shoeless Joe Jackson died in 1961.  If New York enacts a statute recognizing a descendible right for publicity for up to a half century after death, I'm afraid that lawyers will be telling the W.P. Kinsellas of this world that not only do you have to cut J.D. Salinger out of Shoeless Joe, but you have to cut Shoeless Joe out of Shoeless Joe.

Well, New York didn't enact a post-mortem right of publicity statute in 1989.  But the legislators are still trying, and a similar bill was introduced for legislative consideration in 2010 and now has now been introduced again in 2011. At the same time, there is a movement afoot to enact a federal right of publicity statute that would include post-mortem  protection.

This is an active, controversial, and (by the low standard of lawyers) interesting area of the law, and my opinion as to the imprudence of a descendible right of publicity may be in the minority is, of course, just that -- one person's opinion.  The fact of the matter is that a post-mortem right of publicity is the law in many states.  Writers should be aware that (as long as they don't falsely imply that their works are authorized or endorsed by the heirs of a dead celebrity) they have a strong argument that the depiction of the dead in works of fiction is protected by the First Amendment. Again, think of Oates, DeLillo, Cunningham -- and Kinsella.  The statutes and the case law generally attempt to distinguish between conventionally commercial uses of a celebrity's name and likeness (such as use of images on tee-shirts) and more expressive, transformative uses (such as, one hopes, use in novels and films).  But the scope of the post-mortem right of publicity is none-too-clear, and celebrities' estates may be well-funded, aggressive, and lawyered-up. It's a grey area, and it may make sense to seek out legal advice before launching on a major project. Like Steve Hillard, you could conceivably end up with a fight on your hands.  If you do, it would be cheerful to have the support of an established publishing house.

Hilliard doesn't.  He self-published his novel.  About 900 copies had been sold prior to the filing of the lawsuit.

Postscript:  The right of publicity is not the only arrow in the quiver of those who would seek to prevent the use of real people, living or dead, as characters in fictional works.  Here, from lawyer Mark Litwak, is a good summary of the various legal theories that have been invoked, with greater or lesser success.  See also this summary from UK attorney David Crocker comparing UK and US law on the descendible right of publicity.  Finally, you might be interested in this account from The Hollywood Reporter of a federal judge recently holding the Washington State right of publicity statute unconstitutional in part.

Update:  Writer Diana Stevan's comment reminded me that I should have mentioned the lawsuit recently filed against Kathryn Stockett, author of The Help.  The plaintiff is a sixty year-old woman, who once worked as a maid for one of Stockett's relatives; she claims that she was used as the model for one of the principal characters in the book.  As is typical of such cases involving living plaintiffs, the complaint alleges a hodgepodge of legal theories, including violation of the right of publicity, false light invasion of privacy, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.  Here is an article by Laura Miller of Salon about the case. A copy of the complaint is here on the Jackson Jambalaya blog. And here is a good discussion Susan Cushman and lawyer John Mason on Jane Friedman's Writer's Digest blog.

See Diana's fine blog at http://www.dianastevan.com/.

Matterhorn: Winner of The Center for Fiction First Novel Award

Earlier this evening, I attended The Center for Fiction's festive awards dinner. Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes won the Flaherty-Dunnan Best First Novel prize. It was an especially strong field of short-listed finalists this year.  No fewer than three appeared in this week's New York Times 100 notable books of 2010 list: Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer, Mr. Peanut by Adam Ross, and Matterhorn.