A moving, fictional journey to Taiwan has netted a faculty member at UNCG first place in the Barnes & Noble Booksellers’ Discover Great New Writers Awards.

John Dalton won first place in the fiction category for “Heaven Lake,” his novel about an American missionary who travels to Taiwan to save souls only to be moved by his own spiritual journey.

“In this stunning debut novel, John Dalton examines the nature of love and faith as he takes a protagonist on a long, scenic journey into the heart of modern China. Graceful and evocative without being labored, Dalton’s prose establishes his credentials as a first-rate storyteller, and as an equally gifted translator of the language of the fragile human soul,” wrote novelist Mark Dunn, one of the judges for the awards.

Dalton is a native of St. Louis and a member of the MFA Writing Program faculty at UNCG. He holds an MFA from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and has received the James Michner/Paul Engle Award, as well as first- and second-year fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Mass.