Judson Mitcham received the 2006 Townsend Prize for his novel Sabbath Creek in a ceremony held in Atlanta last month. Mitcham is the first to receive the Townsend Prize twice; previously he won it for The Sweet Everlasting (1998). Both his novels were published by UGA Press, and this is the fifth UGA Press title to be honored with the Townsend Prize.
The Townsend Prize is awarded every other year to an outstanding novel or short-story collection published by a Georgia writer during the previous two years.
Sabbath Creek tells the story of an unlikely friendship between a 93-year-old black man, Stroud, and a 14-year-old white boy, Lewis, that develops after Lewis’s mother uproots him to journey through South Georgia.