The Chronicle of Higher Education today (subscriber site) contains the following:
The University of Georgia Press has revoked a prominent fiction award to Brad Vice, whose short-story collection contains uncredited material from a book published decades ago, the publisher recently announced. The press has also recalled the collection, The Bear Bryant Funeral Train, from bookstores.
In a written statement, the press said it had learned on October 13 “that one of the stories in Mr. Vice’s collection, ‘Tuscaloosa Knights,’ contained uncredited material from the fourth chapter of the first section of Carl Carmer’s Stars Fell on Alabama.” It said it had immediately frozen stock of Mr. Vice’s book and contacted the author, who “admitted that ‘Tuscaloosa Knights’ borrows heavily from Stars Fell on Alabama [and] that he had made a terrible mistake in neglecting to acknowledge Carmer’s work.”
On October 8 I received an email from my aunt, Margaret Butler, a public librarian and exceptionally sharp wit in Tuscaloosa, who wrote (ellipses in original):
I was anxiously awaiting a new book “The Bear Bryant Funeral Train”……a fiction book of short stories about the South…so it finally came and I checked out a copy, brought it home…..opened to the first story and started reading…..couldn’t believe it……I had read this BEFORE!! in the book Stars Fell on Alabama by Carl Carmer….. Now this BB Funeral Train book had won the Flannery O’Connor award, was written by a guy from Northport who now has his PhD and is teaching at Miss State…..so I spent yesterday copying the text from both stories and highlighting the paragraphs that were Word for Word. Elizabeth wrote a letter to the Univ of Georgia Press, who published the book and is sending the highlighted copies to them. There was nowhere in the new book where Carl Carmer/ Stars Fell was mentioned. It really looks like blatant case of plagiarism….will let you know what happens….the author’s name is Brad Vice……appropriate last
name ….
Aunt Margaret was interviewed Friday by the Chronicle, so I had hoped to see her name in print (she has been in the Tuscaloosa paper, at least) for blowing the whistle, but no such luck. I did find, however, the following from a blog that you could incorrectly say stands for Academics Hit Heads (definitely PG-13 language therein; be warned): “AW LLOYD: Miz Margaret Butler, librarian at the Tuscaloosa Public Library, has made waves by kicking one ACADEMIC S***HEAD named Vice into oblivion.” I love that.