Whirlwind continues for UI Pulitzer winner

IOWA CITY - One week after winning the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, Paul Harding's life is still a whirlwind of media interviews, congratulatory phone calls and meetings with the governor.

“It was really, just being swept up in a tornado,” Harding said Monday. “And it more or less hasn't stopped since.”

Harding is a graduate and current visiting faculty member at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.

The avalanche of publicity and interest is especially pronounced, Harding said, because the media and the public like his personal narrative: a first novel rejected by many publishers, finally printed by a small, niche publishing house, goes on to win critical acclaim and big awards. He was called “Mr. Cinderella” in the New York Times.

Harding's winning novel, “Tinkers,” is hard to find on local bookstore shelves because it comes from such a small publisher, Bellevue Literary Press, and few copies were on hand when last week's Pulitzer announcement came.

“It wasn't like there's a warehouse full of them,” he said. “They didn't expect it to win, now they're sort of scrambling to print up a much bigger run.”

Prairie Lights Books in Iowa City quickly sold the handful of copies it had. A shipment of 50 more should arrive at Prairie Lights today. The store sold about 100 copies of “Tinkers” throughout the spring.

“There's been a lot of demand” since the Pulitzer win, owner Jan Weissmiller said.

News of his Pulitzer didn't even come by phone call. Harding, 42, checked the Internet the afternoon of the awards and “fell off my couch” when he saw his own name. Within minutes he was doing phone interviews, and about one hour later he made his way to the Writers' Workshop to lead his class.

“There was Champagne and me sort of babbling in stunned shock,” he said.

While it would be nice to be back home, just north of Boston, to celebrate with his wife and two sons, ages 9 and 5, Harding said in a way, it's fitting to be at the Writers' Workshop.

“This is where I started writing,” he said. “The workshop is just a pretty singular, incredible place.”

Harding, who attended the Workshop from 1998 to 2000, will return home after this semester and continue work on his second novel. He's about half way through a first draft.

“This is the seal of approval to keep doing what I've been doing,” he said. “The main thing is to celebrate it with everybody, have a blast and then get back to writing as soon as possible.”