The Georgia Center for the Book, the Southern Academy of Literary Arts and Scholarly Research at Georgia Perimeter College and the Chattahoochee Review, are pleased to announce the 10 finalists for the 2012 Townsend Prize for Fiction. Atlanta INtown editor Collin Kelley’s mystery novel, Remain In Light, is one of the finalists.

Selected by a jury of the sponsoring organizations, this panel considered over 40 books published by Georgia writers in the past two years. A board of judges awards the Townsend Prize for Fiction biennially to an outstanding novel or short-story collection published by a Georgia writer during that biennium. The 2012 Townsend Prize consists of a $2,000 award and a silver commemorative tray.

The Prize will be awarded to the winner selected from the list of 10 Finalists at a ceremony on Thursday evening, April 26, at the Day Room of the Atlanta Botanical Gardens. Anne Beattie, author of Mrs. Nixon and Walks With Men, who currently serves as the Edgar Allan Poe Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Virginia, will give the keynote address at the event.

Created in 1981, the Prize was named for Jim Townsend, the founding editor of Atlanta magazine, the associate editor of Atlanta Weekly Magazine (of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution ), and an early mentor to such Georgia writers as Pat Conroy , Terry Kay , Bill Diehl, and Anne Rivers Siddons . Previous winners of the Townsend Prize include Kathryn Stockett for The Help, Ha Jin for The Bridegroom: Stories, and Alice Walkerfor The Color Purple.

The 10 Finalist for the 2012 Townsend Prize for Fiction are:

Daniel Black for Perfect Peace, St Martin’s Press

Lynn Cullen for Reign Of Madness, G.P. Putnam’s Sons

Ann Hite for Ghost On Black Mountain, Gallery Books

Joshilyn Jackson for Backseat Saints, Grand Central Publishing

Collin Kelley for Remain In Light, Vanilla Heart Publishing

Thomas Mullen for The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers, Random House

Andrew Plattner for A Marriage Of Convenience, BkMk Press, University of Missouri-Kansas City

Josh Russell for My Bright Midnight, Louisiana State University Press

Joseph Skibell for A Curable Romantic, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

Amanda Kyle Williams for The Stranger You Seek, Bantam Books