Kennesaw State Assistant Professor of English Dr. Andrew Plattner’s book, “Dixie Luck: Stories and the Novella Terminal,” was nominated for a Townsend Prize for Fiction on Friday, Feb. 7, according to a tweet by KSU College of Humanities and Social Sciences.
The award is given to a Georgia writer every two years by the Chattahoochee Review and the Georgia Center for the Book. This year marks Plattner’s third nomination, an honor he noted as both a surprise and a thrill.
Before becoming a professor, Plattner was a horse-racing journalist, drawing on that experience frequently while writing Dixie Luck.
“I write a lot about gambling,” Plattner said. “I write a lot about horse-racing. I’m from Kentucky and I grew up with that stuff, so that kind of life is interesting to me.”
Plattner said that honesty is the main theme of the stories in Dixie Luck. He described his characters as living on the edge of society and skirting the law, while also trying to make sense of their place in life. The characters struggle to overcome their self-imposed obstacles and were compelling as a result.
“Terminal,” one of the stories included in Dixie Luck, won the Faulkner Society’s Gold Medal for Best Novella in 2016, according to Faulkner Society. He said he wrote Terminal in 2014 over the course of six months, and the entire book took roughly eight years.
During the publishing process, Mercer Publishing reached out to Plattner for cover art ideas. He said he discovered a collection of old matchbooks from businesses around the South at a flea market years ago. A few of these matchbooks have been included on the cover of Dixie Luck, representing the theme of individual stories with a common, southern origin.
Plattner noted that the greatest challenge for writers is learning to cope with failure.
“I dare say each story was revised 25 times, at least, and I think that is modest,” Plattner said. “You have to go through the process of understanding what the story really wants to be about, and as a writer, you have to listen and pay attention to what the story is telling you. That’s just a ton of work.”
Plattner arrived at KSU to take over for Director of Master of Arts in Professional Writing and Professor of creative writing Tony Grooms, a fellow finalist for the Townsend Prize, while he was abroad.
Plattner noted that teaching at KSU has given him a tremendous advantage as a writer.
“KSU has been a very positive thing for me,” Plattner said. “The more time I have to write my stuff, the better I’m likely to do. Publishing is part of my position. The blessing of this English department is that they understand that if they give their writers more time to write, there’s a much greater possibility that they will publish more.”
The Townsend Prize will be awarded on Thursday, April 23, at the DeKalb History Center.
