Brad Vice (born November 14, 1973) is an English language and composition professor at the

University of West Bohemia The University of West Bohemia in Pilsen (, ZČU) is a university in Plzeň, Czech Republic. It was founded in 1991 and consists of nine faculties. History The university was formed by the merger of the ''College of Mechanical and Electrical E ...

. He grew up in

Alabama Alabama ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Deep South, Deep Southern regions of the United States. It borders Tennessee to the north, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gu ...

. His

short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction. It can typically be read in a single sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the old ...

collection, ''The Bear Bryant Funeral Train'', won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction from the

University of Georgia Press The University of Georgia Press or UGA Press is the university press of the University of Georgia, a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Athens, Georgia. It is the oldest and largest publishing house in Georgia and a me ...

, but the award was later rescinded and the book recalled after portions of the story were alleged to be plagiarized from an earlier work by Carl Carmer.

Biography

Vice was born in

Tuscaloosa, Alabama Tuscaloosa ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Tuscaloosa County, Alabama, Tuscaloosa County in west-central Alabama, United States, on the Black Warrior River where the Gulf Coastal Plain, Gulf Coastal and Piedmont (United States), Piedm ...

, in 1973, and raised in nearby Northport. Vice's father, Leon Vice, was a high school history teacher and a farmer while his mother Dorothy was a radiology technician. He received his master's degree from the

University of Tennessee The University of Tennessee, Knoxville (or The University of Tennessee; UT; UT Knoxville; or colloquially UTK or Tennessee) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Knoxville, Tennessee, United St ...

and Ph.D. from The

University of Cincinnati The University of Cincinnati (UC or Cincinnati, informally Cincy) is a public university, public research university in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States. It was founded in 1819 and had an enrollment of over 53,000 students in 2024, making it the ...

. During a brief stint working at

Mississippi State University Mississippi State University for Agriculture and Applied Science, commonly known as Mississippi State University (MSU), is a Public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Mississippi State, Mississippi, Un ...

as a professor, Vice published his doctoral thesis as a standalone work. Shortly after it won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, a librarian at the Tuscaloosa Public Library noted that "plot, language and even the title of his first short story" had been lifted from a story by Carl Carmer titled "Stars Fell on Alabama". Vice lost his job at Mississippi State, as well as his award from the University of Georgia, and his Ph.D. from Cincinnati was called into question. Vice is currently serving as an instructor at the

Plzeň Plzeň (), also known in English and German as Pilsen (), is a city in the Czech Republic. It is the Statutory city (Czech Republic), fourth most populous city in the Czech Republic with about 188,000 inhabitants. It is located about west of P ...

in the

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, and historically known as Bohemia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the south ...

''The Bear Bryant Funeral Train''

In late 2004, Vice's short story collection, ''The Bear Bryant Funeral Train'', won the Flannery O'Connor Short Fiction Award from the

University of Georgia The University of Georgia (UGA or Georgia) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university with its main campus in Athens, Georgia, United States. Chartered in 1785, it is the oldest public university in th ...

Press. The Press published the collection in late 2005.

Kirkus Reviews ''Kirkus Reviews'' is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus. The magazine's publisher, Kirkus Media, is headquartered in New York City. ''Kirkus Reviews'' confers the annual Kirkus Prize to authors of fiction, no ...

, in a starred review, called it "distinguished and disturbing work, from a lavishly gifted new writer."

Publishers Weekly ''Publishers Weekly'' (''PW'') is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents. Published continuously since 1872, it has carried the tagline, "The International News Magazine of ...

agreed: "Vice has a gift for making the extraordinary plausible, for rendering complex motivations in spare but metaphoric language and searing details." When the University of Georgia Press discovered that one of the stories in ''The Bear Bryant Funeral Train'' incorporated material from a short story by Carl Carmer, the Press accused Vice of

plagiarism Plagiarism is the representation of another person's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions as one's own original work.From the 1995 ''Random House Dictionary of the English Language, Random House Compact Unabridged Dictionary'': use or close ...

, revoked the Flannery O'Connor Short Fiction Award, and destroyed unsold copies of the book. Science fiction author

Jason Sanford Jason Sanford is an American science fiction author whose 2022 novel ''Plague Birds'' was a finalist for the Nebula and Philip K. Dick Awards.

defended Vice in the quarterly journal '' storySouth'', describing the affair as a "literary lynching". A number of other writers and editors came to Vice's defense. Jake Adam York, a founding editor of ''storySouth'', noted that Vice had allowed his short story and the four-page section of Carmer's original book to be published side by side in ''Thicket'', a journal edited by York. To York, this action by Vice "implicitly acknowledges the relationship (and) allows the evidence to be made public." York added that doing this allowed the readers to enter the "intertextual space in which (Vice) has worked" and that what Vice was doing with his story was

allusion Allusion, or alluding, is a figure of speech that makes a reference to someone or something by name (a person, object, location, etc.) without explaining how it relates to the given context, so that the audience must realize the connection in the ...

, not

. York also stated that, according to his own analysis of Vice's story and Carmer's source material, Vice did not break copyright law. After Vice's book was destroyed, remaining used copies on

Amazon.com Amazon.com, Inc., doing business as Amazon, is an American multinational technology company engaged in e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. Founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos in Bellevu ...

and other booksellers were selling for hundreds of dollars. In late March 2007, a new edition of the collection was published by River City Publishing. According to a report in ''The Oxford American'', "The revised version will more closely mirror Vice's 2001 dissertation from the University of Cincinnati, which contained many of the stories that ended up being published as ''The Bear Bryant Funeral Train''. Unlike the UGA Press edition, it will be divided into two sections, the latter of which is set entirely in Tuscaloosa". Vice previously published some of the short stories from ''The Bear Bryant Funeral Train'' in various fiction journals, and his story "Report from Junction" (published in ''The Atlantic Monthly'' in 2002) was selected by

Katrina Kenison Katrina Kenison is an American author of literary memoir and nonfiction about parenting, life stages, mindfulness, and simplicity. Her first book, ''Mitten Strings for God: Reflections for Mothers in a Hurry'', published in 2000, encourages paren ...

in her list of "Other Distinguished Stories" in The Best American Short Stories 2003. One of the stories previously published in ''Shenandoah'' in 2005 has been a subject of scholarly study.

Qworty victim

In May 2013,

Salon.com ''Salon'' is an American politically progressive and liberal news and opinion website created in 1995. It publishes articles on U.S. politics, culture, and current events. Content and coverage ''Salon'' covers a variety of topics, includ ...

reporter

Andrew Leonard Andrew Leonard (born 1962) is an American journalist who writes feature articles for ''San Francisco'' and contributes to Medium. From 1995 to 2014 he wrote for '' Salon.com''. He has also written for ''Wired''. Career Leonard is credited with c ...

revealed that Brad Vice had been the victim of a "ferocious assault" by Robert Clark Young, a writer who spent years anonymously attacking his literary enemies by inserting "revenge edits" into Wikipedia. Editing under the user name "Qworty", Young "devoted a significant amount of intellectual and emotional energy to attacking not only Vice, but the entire community of writers centered around the

Sewanee Writers' Conference The Sewanee Writers' Conference is a writers' conference held every summer on the campus of the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. The conference was started in 1989 by founding director Wyatt Prunty and the current director is Leah ...

that had nurtured Vice."

References

External links

Vice's story "Tuscaloosa Knights"

on which Vice based his story. This is a four-page section from the chapter "Tuscaloosa Nights" in ''Stars Fell on Alabama''. {{DEFAULTSORT:Vice, Brad 1973 births American short story writers Living people University of Tennessee alumni University of Cincinnati alumni Mississippi State University faculty People from Northport, Alabama Writers from Tuscaloosa, Alabama Academic staff of the University of West Bohemia