The Illinois Arts Council Agency recently awarded a 2019 Literary Award to Associate Professor of English Janice Tuck Lively.

Lively received the award, along with a $1,000 prize, for her story “Greene Cake,” which was published in the magazine Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora. The magazine also received a $1,000 prize for publishing her story.

The Literary Awards Program recognizes Illinois writers and promotes greater awareness of non-commercial publishing in the state by encouraging Illinois not-for-profit literary magazines to publish and disseminate new work by living Illinois writers and poets.

To enter work in the awards program, eligible literary magazines—whose primary mission is to publish contemporary poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction—nominate Illinois writers recently featured in their publications. Ten Illinois writers, and the magazines that published and nominated their work, received Literary Awards during the 2019 fiscal year.

Lively was pleased and surprised to have won the award, and didn’t realize it came with a cash prize. She plans to use the money to continue her writing, and has been involved in several projects, including a novel and her first efforts at writing plays.

“I feel like the pieces are coming together,” she said. “I think of the award as a way of acknowledging my writing, and a way to encourage me to keep writing.”