Tuesday, April 18, 2000
Editorial
 

John Waters once said that he wanted to make reading cool again, and we here at the  Ampersand, like John Waters, also want to make reading cool again. Literature is dying in this country. Every day more and more children turn on the TV instead of turning on books. While the literacy rate in this country has risen steadily over the last decade, that skill is only being put to use in reading buttons on the TV remote, or in reading instructions about how to use the TV remote. Kids don’t want words or sentences anymore – they want images and images strung together to make scenes or parts of scenes. But, like John Waters, we want to make reading cool again. That is why, for the third straight year, we are proud to present the Amper Awards for Special Achievements in Short Literature and Brief Fiction. This is our chance to reward young authors and to offer them the kind of exposure that they could only get otherwise by printing out copies of their work and leaving stacks of those copies at convenient locations around campus. 

The Amper Awards are intended to recognize artists working in the under-appreciated medium of short literature. We select the winners after an arduous six-month reading period. We rank the pieces on a number of criteria — judging them on their "shortness," their "briefisity," their "special achievementizing in literaturary merit," and their "good." Although we no longer have the budget to offer cash prizes to the winners, we do encourage them to treat themselves to dinner to celebrate. We only hope that they don’t break their arms patting themselves on the back. 

There has been some criticism in the last few years that the Amper Awards have gotten too commercial. People say that we have been recognizing authors not for their artistic merit but rather for their marketability. These accusations hit us like a critical fist to our metaphorical nuts of integrity. We have always–and will have always–cared about artistic value. As long-time AmperEditor Bob Weythman used to say, "You can’t spell Amper Awards for Special Achievements in Short Literature and Brief Fiction without A-R-T!"
 
 
 

                                                                                                          -Luke Del Tredici & Aaron Hilliard 
                                                                                                                  AmperEditors