2021 Joyce Carol Oates Prize Longlist Announced
LAFAYETTE, CA, December 8, 2020—The Longlist Finalists for the 5th Annual 2021 Joyce Carol Oates Prize recognizing mid-career authors in fiction were announced today at a private virtual ceremony. The $50,000 prize will be awarded to an author of fiction in the middle of a burgeoning career. The prize is administered by the Simpson Literary Project, which was created in collaboration between the Lafayette Library and Learning Center Foundation and the University of California, Berkeley, English Department. The Longlist Finalists (attached) were selected from official submissions by publishers, agents, authors, and author representatives.
Our distinguished Joyce Carol Oates Prize Longlisted authors embody the inspiring richness and vitality of storytelling in our country. The Simpson Literary Project, with our investment in writing and teaching across a great social and generational spectrum, celebrates stories and their makers, and we affirm the best of our diverse culture and underscore our shared humanity.
— Joseph Di Prisco, Chair, Simpson Literary Project
The Finalists are expected to be named in early March 2021, followed by a Winner in early April 2021. Recipients will participate in virtual or non-virtual events, as well as a two-week residence in Berkeley, California, during the Spring Semester 2021.
The Simpson Literary Project, established in 2016, is an innovative private/public partnership that fosters new literature, supports authors, and enhances the lives of readers, writers, educators, and students in diverse communities in California and the nation. The Project serves high-school age writers through Simpson Writing Workshops, offered at no charge, to schools and after-school programs, taught by Simpson Fellows, who are graduate student creative writers from the Berkeley English Department. This spring virtual workshops will take place at Girls Inc-Alameda County, Contra Costa Juvenile Hall, and elsewhere.
The eminent and celebrated Joyce Carol Oates continues as an honorary member of the Board of Directors. Previous winners of the Prize are: 2017 T. Geronimo Johnson, author of Welcome to Braggsville (HarperCollins); 2018 Anthony Marra, author of The Tsar of Love and Techno (Hogarth); 2019 Laila Lalami, author of The Other Americans, (Pantheon); 2020 Daniel Mason, author of The Winter Soldier (Little, Brown, & Co.).
THE LONGLISTED AUTHORS FOR THE 2021 JOYCE CAROL OATES PRIZE AND THEIR MOST RECENT TITLES:
Rumaan Alam, Leave the World Behind (Ecco)
Chloe Benjamin, The Immortalists (Putnam)
Britt Bennett, Vanishing Half (Riverhead)
Marie-Helene Bertino, Parakeet (FSG)
Blake Butler, Alice Knott (Riverhead)
Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Likes (FSG)
Leesa Cross-Smith, So We Can Glow (Grand Central)
Danielle Evans, Office of Historical Corrections (Riverhead)
Percival Everett, Telephone (Graywolf)
Garth Greenwell, Cleanness (FSG)
Yaa Gyasi, Transcendent Kingdom (Knopf)
Debra Jo Immergut, You Again (Ecco)
Andrew Krivak, The Bear (Bellevue)
Catherine Lacey, Pew (FSG)
Norman Lock, American Follies (Bellevue)
Micheline Aharonian Marcom, The New American (Simon & Schuster)
Courtney Maum, Touch (Putnam)
Ander Monson, The Gnome Stories (Greywolf)
Tea Obreht, Inland (Random House)
Jenny Offill, Weather (Knopf)
Ivy Pochoda, These Women (Ecco)
Darin Strauss, The Queen of Tuesday (Random House)
Lysley Tenorio, The Son of Good Fortune (Ecco)
Héctor Tobar, The Last Great Road Bum (MCD/FSG)
Jessica Treadway, The Gretchen Question (Delphinium)
Laura Van Den Berg, I Hold a Wolf by the Ears (FSG)
Jacqueline Woodson, Red at the Bone (Riverhead)
Lidia Yuknavitch, Verge (Riverhead)
Laura Zigman, Separation Anxiety (Ecco)
For more information, please contact Diane Del Signore at 510.919.0970 or diane@newliteraryproject.org.