The
New York Public Library Announces Finalists for 2007 Young Lions Fiction
Award
Winning
writer to be awarded $10,000 prize at May 21 ceremony
April
18, 2007, New York, NY - For the seventh consecutive year, America's best young
fiction writers are in the running to win The New York Public Library's
prestigious Young Lions Fiction Award. The Library announced the five finalists,
honoring the works of authors age 35 and under who are making an impact on
today's culture and society. The winning writer will be awarded a $10,000 prize
on May 21 at a ceremony hosted by Young Lions co-founder and actor Ethan Hawke,
held in the Celeste Bartos Forum of the Humanities and Social Sciences Library
at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue.
The
finalists for The New York Public Library's 2007 Young Lion Fictions Award are;
�
Chris Adrian, The Children's Hospital
� Kevin Brockmeier, The Brief History of the Dead
� Tony D'Souza, Whiteman
� Olga Grushin, The Dream Life of Sukhanov
� Karen Russell, St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves
In announcing the nominees, Library President Dr. Paul LeClerc said,
"Since its founding, the Young Lions Fiction Award has called attention to a
diverse group of talented young writers. It is extremely rewarding to help these
authors at an early stage of their careers and see them move onward and upward
in their literary endeavors. As a home for the world's great literature, we are
proud to play a role in supporting the writers whose works will fill our shelves
in the years to come."
Presented by the
Library's Young Lions Program, the award is given annually to an American writer
age 35 or younger for either a novel or a collection of short stories.
Established in 2001 by the Young Lions, a membership group for supporters of the
Library in their 20s and 30s, the award encourages excellence among young
writers, celebrates their accomplishments publicly, and makes a difference in
the lives of these artists as they continue to build their careers.
Each year five
young fiction writers are selected by a reading committee of Young Lions
members, writers, editors, and librarians. A panel of three award judges,
including last year's winner Uzodinma Iweala, acclaimed New York author and
reviewer Kathryn Harrison, and former journalist and award winning author Jeff
Talarigo, will subsequently select the winner for the $10,000 prize.
Last year
twenty-three-old novelist Uzodinma Iweala was presented with the 2006 prize at a
high profile ceremony attended by Academy Award-nominated actors Ethan Hawke and
Terrence Howard and actor Famke Janssen who read excerpts from each nominated
work. Iweala's debut novel Beasts of No Nation (HarperCollins) is a
harrowing tale of a young boy, Agu, forced into fighting as a child soldier in
an unnamed West African country's civil war.
Other winners
from previous years include: Monique Truong, Book of Salt; Anthony
Doerr, The Shell Collector; Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is
Illuminated; Colson Whitehead, John Henry Days; and Mark Z.
Danielewski, House of Leaves.
About
the Young Lions
The Young Lions is a membership
group at The New York Public Library for supporters in their 20s and 30s. Young
Lions programs celebrate the work of young writers, artists, and innovators in
various fields who are making an impact on our culture and society. By
participating in special events and activities, Young Lions contribute to the
very life and vitality of the Library. Information about the Young Lions group,
including events and forums, is available online at www.nypl.org/joinyl
or phone 212-930-0885.
About The
New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award
New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award is a $10,000 prize awarded
each spring to a writer age 35 or younger for a novel or a collection of short
stories. Established in 2001, this annual award recognizes the work of young
authors and celebrates their accomplishments publicly, making a difference in
their lives as they continue to build their careers. The Young Lions Fiction
Award was spearheaded by Young Lions Committee members Ethan Hawke, Jennifer
Rudolph Walsh, Rick Moody, and Hannah McFarland. The Award is made possible
by an endowment created with generous gifts from Russell Abrams, Nina Collins,
Hannah and Gavin McFarland, Ethan Hawke, Stephan Loewentheil, Rick Moody, Andrea
Olshan and Jennifer Rudolph Walsh.
About The
New York Public Library
The New York Public Library was created in
1895 with the consolidation of the private libraries of John Jacob Astor and
James Lenox with the Samuel Jones Tilden Trust. The Library provides free and
open access to its physical and electronic collections and information, as well
as to its services. It comprises four research centers - The Humanities and
Social Sciences Library; The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts;
the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; and the Science, Industry
and Business Library - and 86 Branch Libraries in Manhattan, Staten Island, and
the Bronx. Research and circulating collections combined total more than 50
million items, including materials for the visually impaired. In addition, each
year the Library presents thousands of exhibitions and public programs, which
include classes in technology, literacy, and English as a second language. The
New York Public Library serves over 15 million patrons who come through its
doors annually and another 21 million users internationally, who access
collections and services through the NYPL website, www.nypl.org.
Additional Author and Book information
Chris Adrian, The Children's Hospital
McSweeney's
When the world is submerged beneath seven miles of water, only those aboard
the Children's Hospital, a working medical facility and ark built by architect
turned prophet John Grampus (who was ordered by God "to save the kids") survive.
Inside, assailed by mysterious forces, doctors and patients are left to remember
the world they've lost and imagine the one to come. At the center, a young medical
student finds herself gifted with strange powers and a frightening destiny.
Simultaneously epic and intimate, wildly imaginative and unexpectedly relevant,
The Children's Hospital is a work of stunning scope, mesmerizing detail,
and wrenching emotion.
Chris Adrian was born in Washington, D.C. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop,
he recently completed a pediatric residency at the University of California,
San Francisco, and is currently a student at Harvard Divinity School.
Kevin Brockmeier, The Brief History of the Dead
Random House
The City is inhabited by the recently departed, who reside there only
as long as they remain in the memories of the living. Among the current residents
of this afterlife are Luka Sims, who prints the only newspaper in the City,
with news from the other side; Coleman Kinzler, a vagrant who speaks the cautionary
words of God; and Marion and Phillip Byrd, who find themselves falling in love
again after decades of marriage. On Earth, Laura Byrd is trapped by extreme
weather in an Antarctic research station. She's alone and unable to contact
the outside world: her radio is down and the power is failing. She's running
out of supplies as quickly as she's running out of time. The author interweaves
these two stories in a spellbinding tale of human connections across boundaries
of all kinds.
Kevin Brockmeier is the recipient of a Nelson Algren Award, an Italo Calvino
Short Fiction Award, a James Michener-Paul Engle Fellowship, three O. Henry
Awards - one of which was a first prize - and a National Endowment for the Arts
fellowship. He has taught at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and lives in Little
Rock, Arkansas.
Tony D'Souza, Whiteman
Harcourt Trade Publishers
Whiteman is an extraordinary debut novel about a maverick
American relief worker deep in the West African bush. When his funding is cut
off, Jack Diaz refuses to leave his post, a Muslim village in the Ivory Coast,
where Christians and Muslims are squaring off for war. Against a backdrop of
bloody conflict and vibrant African life, Jack and his village guardian, Mamadou,
learn that hate knows no color and that true heroism waits for us where we least
expect it. Brimming with dangerous passions, ubiquitous genies, spirited proverbs,
and the pressures of life in a time of war, Whiteman is a tale of desire,
isolation, humor, action, and fear.
Tony D'Souza's story "Djamilla" earned a 2007 O. Henry Prize. He is a recipient
of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and lives in Sarasota,
Florida.
Olga Grushin, The Dream Life of Sukhanov
Penguin Group
Anatoly Sukhanov, Russia's leading art critic, has risen to the upper
ranks of Soviet society. His contributions to the art world are trumpeted in
the official state encyclopedia, he is married to the beautiful daughter of
the nation's most revered painter, and his children are rising stars in their
own rights. But the triumphs of Sukhanov's middle age are built on the rubble
of his abandoned youthful aspirations, and as he approaches the pinnacle of
his social ascent, long-forgotten memories begin to erode the foundation of
his carefully constructed life. Invaded by unwanted recollections, visited by
the ghosts of past inspirations, and haunted by dreams that overtake his waking
hours, Sukhanov is forced to confront a lifetime of compromises and rediscover
the past he has forsaken.
Born in 1971 in Moscow, Olga Grushin did her early schooling in Prague. She
returned to Moscow in 1981, and later studied art history at the Pushkin Museum
of Fine Arts and journalism at Moscow State University. In 1989, she was given
a full scholarship to Emory University. She has been a researcher and an interpreter
at the Carter Center and an editor at Harvard University's Dumbarton Oaks Research
Library and Collection. This is her first novel. Grushin, who became a U.S.
citizen in 2002, lives outside Washington, D.C., with her husband and their
son.
Karen Russell, St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised By Wolves
Knopf Publishing Group
In the collection's title story, a pack of girls raised by wolves are
painstakingly reeducated by nuns. In "Haunting Olivia," two young boys make
midnight trips to a boat graveyard in search of their dead sister, who set sail
in the exoskeleton of a giant crab. In "Z.Z.'s Sleepaway Camp for Disordered
Dreamers," a boy whose dreams foretell implacable tragedies is sent to a summer
camp for troubled sleepers. And "Ava Wrestles the Alligator" introduces the
remarkable Bigtree Wrestling Dynasty - Grandpa Sawtooth, Chief Bigtree, and
twelve-year-old Ava - proprietors of Swamplandia!, the island's #1 Gator Theme
Park and Café. Ava is still mourning her mother when her father
disappears, his final words to her the swamp maxim "Feed the gators, don't talk
to strangers." Left to look after seventy incubating alligators and an older
sister who may or may not be having sex with a succubus, Ava meets the Bird
Man, and learns that when you're a kid it's often hard to tell the innocuous
secrets from the ones that will kill you if you keep them.
Karen Russell, a native of Miami, has been featured in both The New
Yorker's debut fiction issue and New York Magazine's list of twenty-five
people to watch under the age of twenty-six. She is a graduate of the Columbia
MFA program and is the 2005 recipient of the Transatlantic Review/Henfield Foundation
Award. She is twenty-five years old and lives in New York City.
###
Contact :
Jennifer Lam 212.592.7700
| jennifer_lam@nypl.org
vd:04.18.07:nypl031
