Presence, the Play Receives Prestigious Mary Shelley Fiction Award

New York City, July 9, 2022—The novel Presence, the Play by William Jefferson and its audio adaptation by SueMedia Productions have received the 2022 Mary Shelley Award for Outstanding Fiction Work from the Media Ecology Association at its annual convention, held this year in Rio de Janeiro, July 7–10. (www.media-ecology.org/convention).

The Media Ecology Association’s Mary Shelley Award is awarded to “a novel, short story, hypertext, play, script, comic, audio recording, motion picture, video, or other narrative forms, that include media ecology themes, concepts, or insights.” Recent winners include New York Times bestsellers Ready Player One by Ernest Cline and Exhalation by Ted Chiang.

Recorded at Radio Waves Studios in NYC, AudioFile Magazine said: “William Jefferson’s sly and insightful novel, with its call to pay attention to our lived moments, comes to listeners in a well-performed production reminiscent of a radio play. The full cast, led by Nancy Wu as Narrator and featuring Gary Furlong as Script, includes a talented and diverse group [includings] Simon Jones, Cary Hite, Deondra Kamau Means, Robert Fass, and other audiobook veterans who enthusiastically collaborated to bring this novel to an increasing world of audio listeners. Ambulance sirens, squeaking floorboards, and car doors are among the well-placed sound effects that never overwhelm but make the audio nearly visual as well. This production will inspire discussion and color listeners’ next experiences with playing audience to any medium.”

In the words of veteran actor Robert Fass, “Director Sue Zizza has once again pulled together a top-notch batch of narrators to portray a variety of somewhat Tolkien-ish characters in a modern parable about staying present in a largely virtual world.”