William Faulkner Foundation Award

The William Faulkner Foundation (1960-1970) was a charitable organization founded by the novelist William Faulkner in 1960 to support various charitable causes, all educational or literary in nature.

The foundation programs included the William Faulkner Foundation Award for notable first novel; the Ibero-American Award; a scholarship for first-year University of Virginia undergraduates showing talent in creative writing; scholarships for African-Americans from Mississippi seeking higher education; and monetary gifts to a Boy Scouts of America "Negro summer camp" in Mississippi.

The fund's assets derived primarily from Faulkner's Nobel Prize for Literature, and in later years, an "Associates" group contributed further funds. Faulkner also donated to the foundation, over several stages, all of the manuscripts that he had placed on deposit for safekeeping at the University of Virginia library. In 1968, Harold Ober Associates donated to the foundation "certain original records of William Faulkner."

Founding Members of the Foundation included William Faulkner, Linton R. Massey Jr., Faulkner's daughter Jill Faulkner Summers and her husband, Paul Summers Jr. After Faulkner's death in 1962, his widow Estelle Faulkner joined the Foundation.

The foundation was dissolved in 1970 and all its assets conveyed to the University of Virginia.

The original intent of the foundation's two literary awards was to support young writers. The William Faulkner Foundation Award for notable first novel was judged by young faculty at the University of Virginia because "Faulkner felt that young persons can best understand and judge young writers.". The other award, The Ibero-American award, was inspired by Faulkner's visit to Venezuela in 1961, which he had undertaken as part of a cultural diplomacy effort to improve U.S.-Venezuelan relations. Faulkner realized on the trip how many excellent novels by young Latin American writers were not translated into English, and wanted the award to ameliorate the situation. The award and was originally intended to support young writers, but was revised after the project was undertaken, and was awarded for excellence regardless of age, so long as the novel was published after World War II. It was judged by individuals from across Latin America, and the winning novel was to be translated into English at the expense of the Foundation.

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