2025 Recipient: Willy Vlautin
Born and raised in Reno, Nevada, Willy Vlautin is the author of seven novels and is the founder of the bands Richmond Fontaine and The Delines. Vlautin started writing stories and songs at the age of eleven after receiving his first guitar. Inspired by songwriters and novelists like Paul Kelly, Willie Nelson, Tom Waits, William Kennedy, Lucia Berlin, and John Steinbeck, Vlautin works diligently to tell working class stories in his novels and songs.
Vlautin has been the recipient of three Oregon Book Awards, The Nevada Silver Pen Award, and was inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame and the Oregon Music Hall of Fame. He was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and was shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award. Three of his novels, The Motel Life, Lean on Pete, and The Night Always Comes have been adapted as films. His novels have been translated into fourteen languages. Vlautin teaches at Pacific University’s MFA in Writing program and lives near Portland, Oregon with his wife, dog, cats, and horses.
I’ve been in love with the novel for most of my life. I was nineteen when I began working on my first one. I wasn’t a great student, I had taken no writing classes, I just had a big edge to me and a wish to tell working class stories. Never once did I think I’d publish one or thirty-eight years later be fortunate enough to receive the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. When I heard this great news the first thing I thought of were my novels. They have been such great pals to me and have gotten me through a lot of hard years, so to be appreciated for them, well, I wanted to load them up in the car and take them out on the town for a serious night of celebration.
So much of recognition in art is luck and I’ve been a very fortunate man that way. I met my agent, Lesley Thorne, over twenty years ago at a gig I was playing. She’s been a great advocate, friend, and champion of my books ever since. Amy Baker, my brilliant editor at HarperCollins, has always believed in working class fiction and has helped shape and focus my novels and has never once given up on them or let one of them fall through the cracks like so many novels do. I’m so grateful for her friendship and guidance. And my wife, Lee, who has put up with a man who plays 1960’s Italian soundtrack records every day and lives inside other worlds for a living. She’s the smartest, the toughest, and the coolest. My books and I are so honored and grateful for this recognition and to now be a part of New Literary Project.
Willy Vlautin
It was so exciting and rewarding to learn that Willy Vlautin is a recipient of the 2025 Joyce Carol Oates Prize. I’ve had the great pleasure and privilege of working with Willy for nearly twenty years over the course of seven published books (and counting). Through each of his remarkable novels, I’ve been impressed by the power of his words to deeply resonate, illuminate, and remain. I find myself still thinking about his characters, wondering how they’re holding up in such difficult times, and hoping they’re getting by. Willy has an extraordinary talent for confronting issues facing modern America. His novels cover themes including health care, homelessness, the housing crisis, the toll war takes on veterans and their families, addiction, mental health, loneliness, and regret. His portraits of everyday Americans are often heartbreaking, sometimes harrowing, but always hopeful, and they are bearable through the gentle care and respect he shows his characters and the resiliency of the human heart. Reading his work is an exercise in empathy and a lesson on how to be a better human being. I am so proud of Willy for his dedication to telling these often difficult but necessary stories with unsentimental compassion, and I am so grateful to New Literary Project for honoring his body of work with this esteemed prize.
Amy Baker
VP/Associate Publisher and Editorial Director, HarperCollins