Out of Competition

The 2023 winner of the Kenneth Patchen Award for the Innovative Novel is Lew Collins, of Cannes, France, for his novel Out of Competition. In the novel,

demonstrators protest for democracy at the Rennes-Sur-Mer annual film festival, kidnapping a Hollywood producer while a Russian impresario's shark falls from a helicopter out in the bay, and the festival's deputy usurps his boss's position. Chaos headlines a year to forget or the one to remember. People who should win don't. Those who shouldn't do. Nobody knows anything, everyone off the air, out to lunch, or simply Out of Competition.