2025 Recipient: Jennine Capó Crucet
Jennine Capó Crucet (she/her/ella) is a writer and educator. A recipient of a PEN/O. Henry Prize and a former Contributing Opinion Writer for The New York Times, she’s the author of four books: the novel Make Your Home Among Strangers, which won the International Latino Book Award and has been adopted as an all-campus/community read at over forty U.S. universities; the multiple award-winning story collection How to Leave Hialeah; and the essay collection My Time Among the Whites: Notes from an Unfinished Education, longlisted for the PEN/Open Book Award. Her most recent book, the critically acclaimed novel Say Hello to My Little Friend, was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize for Fiction and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her fiction and nonfiction have been widely anthologized, and her work has appeared on PBS NewsHour, NPR, and other national and international publications. She’s worked as a professor of creative writing and has taught workshops at conferences across the country. She’s also worked as a screenwriter, a college access counselor to first-generation college students, and as a sketch comedienne (though not all at the same time). Born and raised in Miami, she lives in North Carolina with her family.
It’s hard for me to articulate just how much it means to me to win the 2025 Joyce Carol Oates Prize and to join the list of previous recipients—all writers whose work and careers I deeply admire and from whom I’ve learned so much. The best I can do for now is express my gratitude: Thank you to the New Literary Project and its Board of Directors, UC Berkeley, Saint Mary’s College, and all their supporters and partners for the vital work they do in encouraging people to “write their hearts out” and for investing in writers at all stages of their careers. I cannot wait to join you all for the fall residency and be part of such a vibrant, nourishing community. Thank you to the jurors for selecting an incredible list of finalists; I’m honored to be among such stellar company. Thanks to each of the finalists for creating boldly and bravely, and much love to the incomparable Joyce Carol Oates, who leads us by example in that and other writerly realms. Thank you to every librarian, bookseller, and teacher out there, for their commitment to doing the hard work of keeping our hearts and minds open. I’m eternally grateful to my literary agent, Maria Massie, for her care and brilliance. I don’t know where I’d be without her powerful faith in my work, her support, and her friendship. Oceans of gratitude to my editor, Tim O’Connell, for his superb editorial skills and for steadfastly believing in Say Hello to My Little Friend and its aims from the moment he first read it. Every writer should be so lucky as to have an editorial force like Tim in their corner. Thank you to the incredible Gina Mingacci, for all the doors she’s opened (and wisely closed) and for her invaluable mentorship. My deepest thanks, always, goes to my family: to my beloved ancestors, for their wisdom, guidance, and protection; and to Esmé and Derek, for filling every single day with love, joy, and so much laughter. Without you two and the miracle of your love, there is no writing.
Jennine Capó Crucet
Jennine Capo Crucet is a writer who reminds us what words can do. Their power. Their unknowable mystery. She is a creator and a searcher for what is just, but she is also an entertainer, someone who understands inherently what happens when structure and imagination collide--that sacred space where language transforms and reaches back into the very soul of a place or a people or a culture. In Say Hello To My Little Friend, Jennine blends two seemingly antipodal pillars of the American consciousness--Scarface and Moby Dick--to create a homage to the city of Miami. The novel, like the water that runs through it, touches on everything: Cuban immigration, the restacking of the American Dream, climate crises, Pitbull’s musical canon, and one very intelligent killer whale, Lolita, whose all-seeing eye guides, consumes, and seeks justice, love, knowledge, freedom, and empowerment from the world that she has been cut off from. In combining these things, Jennine has done something I’ve never seen before, threaded a needle-sized needle with an orca-sized orca to tell the story of a city, its people, in a way that left me utterly slack jawed with her humor and brilliance. Thank you to the New Literary Project for selecting Jennine and Say Hello to My Little Friend for this remarkable honor. It’s a work that inspires boldness, something she has done for her whole career and hopefully something with this acknowledgement she can engender in others.
Tim O’Connell
Vice President, Editor, Simon & Schuster