(New York, NY) March 24, 2008 - For the eighth successive year, America’s finest young fiction writers are in competition to win The New York Public Library’s prestigious Young Lions Fiction Award. The Library has announced the five finalists, honoring the works of authors age 35 and under who are making an indelible impression on the world of literature. The winning writer will be awarded a $10,000 prize on April 28, 2008 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 at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street.

The finalists for The New York Public Library’s 2008 Young Lion Fictions Award are:

Ron Currie, Jr., God Is Dead
Ellen Litman, The Last Chicken in America
Peter Nathaniel Malae, Teach the Free Man
Dinaw Mengestu, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears
Emily Mitchell, The Last Summer of the World

“The Young Lions Fiction Award was conceived to highlight the diverse talent of young writers working in our city and our country today, said Library President Dr. 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. Each year 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), will select the winner of the $10,000 prize.

Other winners from previous years include: Uzodinma Iweala, Beasts of No Nation; 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 20’s and 30’s. 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
The 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 87 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 16 million patrons who come through its doors annually and another 25 million users internationally, who access collections and services through the NYPL website, www.nypl.org

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Contact: Jennifer Lam 212.592.7708 | jennifer_lam@nypl.org
JL:03.24.08:nypl016


Additional Author and Book information

Ron Currie, Jr., God is Dead
In God is Dead, God descends to Earth as a Dinka woman from Sudan who subsequently dies in the Darfur desert. The result is a world both bizarrely new yet eerily familiar. In Ron Currie’s provocative, wise, and emotionally resonant God is Dead we meet God himself; the Dinka woman whose mortality He must suffer when He inhabits her body; people all over the world coping with the devastating news of God’s demise; a group of young men who, fearing the end of the world, take fate into their own hands; armies taking up the eternal war between fate and free will; and parents who, in the absence of a deity and the “lack of anything to do on Sundays,” worship their children. On the surface, this is a world utterly transformed—yet certain things remain unchanged: protective parents clash with willful, idealistic teenagers; idols are exalted; small-town rumor mills run unabated; and children often don’t realize how to forgive their parents until it’s too late.

Ron Currie Jr. is a native of Waterville, Maine. His stories have won prizes in The World’s Best Short Story competition and have been shortlisted for the Fish International Short Story award and Swink magazine’s Emerging Writer Award. God is Dead is his first novel.

Ellen Litman, The Last Chicken in America
The Last Chicken in Americais twelve linked, wryly humorous stories about an unforgettable cast of Russian-Jewish immigrants trying to assimilate in a new world. In "Dancers" the home of a married couple is invaded by a pair of hedonistic and financially unstable performers. The hero of "Trajectory of Frying Pans" falls for a coworker who may or may not be trapped in a green-card marriage. In "About Kamyshinskiy" a man, living under the scrutiny of his daughters and neighbors, is trying to start over after the death of his wife. The Last Chicken in America is an impressive debut about the sometimes painful, sometimes hilarious collision of cultures, religions, and generations in contemporary America.

Ellen Litman grew up in Moscow, Russia, where she lived until 1992. Her stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Best New American Voices 2007, Best of Tin House, Ontario Review, Triquarterly, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. She is now an Assistant Professor and the Associate Director of Creative Writing at the University of Connecticut.

Peter Nathaniel Malae, Teach the Free Man
The twelve stories in Teach the Free Man are thematically linked by the subject of incarceration. In his debut collection of stories, Peter Nathaniel Malae avoids sensationalism and exposes the heart and soul in those shadowy, seemingly inaccessible corridors of the human experience. The raw and honest stories are distinguished by the colloquial voices of California’s prison inmates, who, despite their physical and cultural isolation, confront dilemmas with which we can all identify: the choice to show courage against peer pressure; the search for individual rights within a bureaucracy; and the desperate desire for honor in the face of great sacrifice. These stories present poetic examples of finding something redemptive in the least among us.

Peter Nathaniel Malae’s writing has appeared in Cimarron Review, Missouri Review, ZYZZYVA, and a host of other magazines and journals across the nation. His work has been selected for distinguished recognition in the Best American Essays and Best American Mysteries series. He is currently a Steinbeck Fellow at San José State University. His novel in progress What We Are was recently awarded the Joseph Henry Jackson Literary Award by The San Francisco Foundation.

Dinaw Mengestu, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears
Seventeen years ago, Sepha Stephanos fled the Ethiopian Revolution after witnessing soldiers beat his father to the point of certain death, selling off his parents' jewelry to pay for passage to the United States. Now he finds himself running a grocery store in a poor African-American neighborhood in Washington, D.C. He realizes that his life has turned out completely different and far more isolated from the one he had imagined for himself years ago. Told in a haunting and powerful first-person narration that casts the streets of Washington, D.C., and Addis Ababa through Sepha's eyes, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears is a deeply affecting and unforgettable debut novel about what it means to lose a family and a country-and what it takes to create a new home.

Dinaw Mengestu was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1978. In 1980, he immigrated to the United States with his mother and sister, joining his father, who had fled the communist revolution in Ethiopia two years before. He is a graduate of Georgetown University and of Columbia University’s MFA program in fiction. A former intern at The New Yorker, he is the recipient of a 2006 fellowship in fiction from the New York Foundation for the Arts. He lives in New York City.

Emily Mitchell,The Last Summer of the World
In the summer of 1918, with the Germans threatening Paris, Edward Steichen arrives in France to photograph the war for the American army. There he finds a country filled with poignant memories for him: early artistic success, marriage, the birth of two daughters, and a love affair that divided his family. Told with elegance and transporting historical sensitivity, Emily Mitchell’s first novel captures the life of a great American artist caught in the reckoning of a painful past in a world beset by war.

Emily Mitchell's writing has appeared in The Indiana Review, AGNI, The Nation, and The Utne Reader. She lives in San Francisco, California.