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Chris Abani’s books of fiction include The Secret History of Las Vegas, Song for Night, The Virgin of Flames, Becoming Abigail, Graceland, and Masters of the Board. His poetry collections are Sanctificum, There Are No Names for Red, Feed Me the Sun: Collected Long Poems, Hands Washing Water, Dog Woman, Daphne’s Lot, Kalakuta Republic, and, most recently, Smoking the Bible. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the PEN/Hemingway Award, the PEN Beyond the Margins Award, the Hurston Wright Award, and a Lannan Literary Fellowship, among many honors. His work has been translated into French, Italian, Spanish, German, Swedish, Romanian, Hebrew, Macedonian, Ukrainian, Portuguese, Dutch, Bosnian, and Serbian. Nominated by Romeo Oriogun / Representative text: Sanctificum |
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Angie Cruz is a Dominican American, New York–born writer and the author of the novels Soledad; Let It Rain Coffee, longlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Award; and Dominicana, shortlisted for the Women’s Prize and winner of the ALA/YALSA Alex Award. Her latest novel, How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water (2022), is one of the New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2022 and a finalist for the Aspen Words Literary Prize. Cruz is the founder and editor of the award-winning Aster(ix) Journal and teaches at the University of Pittsburgh. Nominated by Cleyvis Natera / Representative text: How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water |
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Born in Mauritius, Ananda Devi has become one of the major literary voices of the Indian Ocean with over twenty-five books, including novels, collections of poetry, short stories, and essays. Published by the French publishers Gallimard and Grasset, she has been translated into over a dozen languages and has received numerous literary prizes and decorations from Mauritius and also from France, with the title of Officier des Arts et des Lettres. In 2014 she received a major award from the Académie Française. The University of Silesia, Poland, conferred upon her a doctorate honoris causa.The Guardian recommended her novel Eve out of Her Ruins among the hundred best contemporary novels in translation by women writers. Nominated by Fabienne Kanor / Representative text: Eve out of Her Ruins |
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Jenny Erpenbeck was born in East Berlin in 1967. While working as an opera director, she debuted with her short novel Story of the Old Child, which was followed by other literary publications, including novels, short stories, and stage plays. Her novel The End of Days was enthusiastically received by both the public and press alike and has been awarded several prizes, including the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize (along with her translator, Susan Bernofsky) in 2015. For her latest novel, Go, Went, Gone, she won, among other awards, the Thomas Mann Prize and the Premio Strega Europeo. In 2017 Erpenbeck was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. Her essay collection in German, No Novel, was published in 2018. Nominated by Alina Stefanescu / Representative text: The End of Days |
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Born in Santiago, Chile, Nona Fernández is an actress and writer and has published two plays, a collection of short stories, and six novels, including Space Invaders and The Twilight Zone, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her book-length essay Voyager was published in 2023. She was selected in 2011 as one of the “best-kept secrets of Latin American literature” by the Guadalajara Book Fair and was awarded the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize in 2017, the top recognition for a female writer in Spanish. Her works have been translated into several languages. Nominated by Idra Novey / Representative text: The Twilight Zone |
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Juan Felipe Herrera has over thirty creative writing books published in various genres, including children’s books, poetry, nonfiction, and hybrid material with cartoons for middle grades. His emphasis has been to speak for the benefit of those who suffer, migrant children and families, LGBTQ students being harassed in schools, and honoring the lives of people of color massacred in various environments. He has won many awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the UCLA Chancellor’s Medal, the Ruth Lily Prize, the LA Times Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement, and the recent Robert Frost Lifetime Achievement Medal and has been inducted into the Latino Hall of Fame. His poetry was enclosed in NASA’s uncrewed, robotic, interplanetary spacecraft Lucy launched in the fall of 2022. Nominated by Allison Adelle Hedge Coke / Representative text: Every Day We Get More Illegal |
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Maxine Hong Kingston is the author of The Woman Warrior, China Men, and The Fifth Book of Peace, among other works. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation, the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award, and the Emerson-Thoreau Medal. President Clinton gave her the National Humanities Medal, and President Obama gave her the National Medal of Arts. An emerita in creative writing at University of California, Berkeley, she has taught students at all grade levels, from grammar school to graduate school, and has led writing-and-meditation workshops for veterans and their families for over twenty years. Kingston lives in Oakland, California. Nominated by Jennifer Kwon Dobbs / Representative text: The Woman Warrior |
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Valeria Luiselli is the author of the award-winning novels The Story of My Teeth (2015), Faces in the Crowd (2013), and the books of essays Sidewalks (2013) and Tell Me How It Ends (2017), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism 2017. Her second novel, Lost Children Archive, was a winner of the 2020 Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and the 2020 Folio Prize. It was a 2019 Kirkus Prize finalist and was longlisted for the Booker Prize, the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and shortlisted for the Simpson Literary Prize. Luiselli is the recipient of a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship and a MacArthur Fellowship. Nominated by Alexandra Lytton Regalado / Representative text: Lost Children Archive |
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Shahrnush Parsipur, novelist, essayist, and translator, is one of Iran’s literary treasures. An outspoken proponent of women’s rights, her books have periodically been banned in Iran. To date, she has written eleven works of fiction and a memoir. A courageous chronicler of women’s struggle for equality, Parsipur’s stories evoke universal themes: sexuality, tradition, subjugation, rebellion, dignity, and growth as her writings shed light on the lives of contemporary Iranians. Her literary style is direct, plain, and sincere yet poignant. Imprisoned by both the Shah’s security agency and the Islamic Republic in turn, the author now lives in exile in California. Nominated by Sholeh Wolpé / Representative text: Women Without Men |
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