1978

Union Dues

By John Sayles

Original Publisher: Little Brown

Current Publisher: Nation Books

Fiction Finalists That Year: 

• Robert Coover for The Public Burning
• Peter De Vries for Madder Music
• James Alan McPherson for Elbow Room
• John Sayles for Union Dues 

Fiction Winner That Year: Mary Lee Settle for Blood Tie

Fiction Judges That Year: Vance Bourjaily, Maureen Howard, Robert Kirsch

The Year in Literature:

• Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
• Isaac Bashevis Singer won the Nobel Prize for literature.

More Information:

• Most of Sayles’ body of work is in film. He has written or written/directed more than thirty films, including “Enormous Changes at the Last Minute” (1983), based on Grace Paley’s NBA-nominated book.
• Sayles’ most recent novel, A Moment in the Sun, was published by McSweeney’s in 2011.