Announcing the 2023 Young Lions Fiction Award Finalists

by Fatimah Asghar

In this heartrending, lyrical debut work of fiction, Fatimah Asghar traces the intense bond of three orphaned siblings who, after their parents die, are left to raise one another. The youngest, Kausar, grapples with the incomprehensible loss of her parents as she also charts out her own understanding of gender; Aisha, the middle sister, spars with her "crybaby" younger sibling as she desperately tries to hold on to her sense of family in an impossible situation; and Noreen, the eldest, does her best in the role of sister-mother while also trying to create a life for herself, on her own terms.

As Kausar grows up, she must contend with the collision of her private and public worlds, and choose whether to remain in the life of love, sorrow, and codependency she's known or carve out a new path for herself. When We Were Sisters tenderly examines the bonds and fractures of sisterhood, names the perils of being three Muslim American girls alone against the world, and ultimately illustrates how those who’ve lost everything might still make homes in each other.

by Elaine Hsieh Chou

A Taiwanese American woman’s coming-of-consciousness ignites eye-opening revelations and chaos on a college campus in this outrageously hilarious and startlingly tender debut novel.

by Zain Khalid

Praised by writers from Robert Jones, Jr., to Maaza Mengiste, Brother Alive is a stylistically brilliant and intellectually acute debut about family, sexuality, and capitalist systems of control, following three adopted brothers—Dayo, Iseul, and Youssef—who live above a mosque in Staten Island with their imam father. Youssef shares everything with his brothers, except for one secret: he sees a shapeshifting, hallucinatory double called Brother, an imaginary friend who seems absolutely real. Their father, Imam Salim, keeps to himself at home, and like Youssef, he also has secrets. When Imam Salim’s path takes him back to Saudi Arabia, the boys, now adults, will be forced to follow, with devastating choices and consequences to follow.

by Reyes Ramirez

The Book of Wanderers is a dynamic short story collection that shows readers what a family of luchadores, a teen on the run, a rideshare driver, a lucid dreamer, a migrant worker in space, a mecha soldier, and a zombie-and-neo-Nazi fighter can have in common. Reyes Ramirez takes readers on a journey through Houston, across dimensions, and all the way to Mars with riveting stories that unpack what it means to be Latinx in contemporary—and perhaps future—America.

by David Sanchez

All Day is a Long Time is a spectacular, raw account of growing up and managing, against every expectation, to carve out a place for hope. We see what it means, and what it takes, to come back from a place of little control—to map ourselves on the world around, and beyond, us. David Sanchez’s debut resounds with real force and demonstrates the redemptive power of the written word.