NYPL's Young Lions Fiction Award Finalists Unveiled
By SLJ Staff -- School Library Journal, 3/26/2008 4:00:00 AM
The competition, sponsored by the New York Public Library (NYPL), comes with a $10,000 prize.
NYPL has announced five finalists: Ron Currie, Jr., author of God Is Dead (Viking, 2007);Ellen Litman, who wrote The Last Chicken in America (Norton, 2007); Peter Nathaniel Malae, who penned Teach the Free Man (Swallow Press, 2007); Dinaw Mengestu, author of The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears (Riverhead, 2007); and Emily Mitchell, who wrote The Last Summer of the World (Norton, 2007).
“The Young Lions Fiction Award was conceived to highlight the diverse talent of young writers working in our city and our country today,” says library President Paul LeClerc. “As an organization devoted to literature and ideas, it is tremendously rewarding for the New York Public Library to aid these authors at an early stage and watch them grow in their literary careers.”
The award is given annually to an American writer age 35 or younger for either a novel or collection of short stories. The five young fiction writers are selected as finalists by a reading committee of Young Lions members, writers, editors, and librarians. A panel of award judges, including novelists Han Ong, Helen Shulman, and last year’s winner Ogla Grushin, who won for The Dream Life of Sukhanov (Penguin, 2006), will select the winner.
Hawke, a Young Lions cofounder, will be on hand to present the award at the Celeste Bartos Forum of the Humanities and Social Sciences building at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street.
