Novels by Nafissa Thompson-Spires, T Kira Madden, and others have made the shortlist for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize.
The shortlist for the award, which recognizes the best debut novels, was announced Wednesday.
Three of the seven titles on the list are recipients of a Kirkus star. Avigayl Sharp’s Offseason, set in a girls’ boarding school, was praised for its “feverish, gross, assiduously literary, belligerently self-conscious” narrator. The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford, a novel about racial tensions in 1920s Oklahoma by Thompson-Spires (a 2018 Kirkus Prize finalist), was praised as “shrewd, audacious, and funny.” And Madden’s Whidbey, about the aftermath of a sex offender’s murder, was called “searingly original.”
Other titles on the shortlist are Emiline Atwood’s A Real Animal, Samatha Josephs’s Carrying, Giada Scodellaro’s Ruins, Child, and Ankur Thakkar’s Blow Yourself Up.
The finalists were selected by novelists R.O. Kwon, Kiese Laymon, Jordy Rosenberg, and Danzy Senna.
On Instagram, Madden expressed her gratitude for the recognition, particularly at a moment when sexual assault is again at the center of a national conversation.
“I read the notification email and sat stunned and quiet, and then I scrolled down and read the judges’ names and actually sobbed.…To be recognized for an ugly novel about the long-term impacts of sexual violence feels especially potent this week. Thank you for giving stories like Whidbey, and the characters within it, a chance to be heard.”
Previous winners of the First Novel Prize include Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer, Tommy Orange’s There There, and Raven Leilani’s Luster. The recipient of the prize receives a $15,000 award; shortlisted authors receive $1,000 each.
The winner of the prize is scheduled to be announced December 8.
Mark Athitakis is writer and reviewer in Arizona.
