Editor-in-Chief Tom Beer talks Kirkus Prize preparations ahead of our 10th anniversary celebration.
This year’s Kirkus Prize is going to be extra special: We’re celebrating the 10th anniversary of the awards—created to honor literary greatness, as well as Kirkus’ nine decades of service to readers—and, for the first time, we’ll be doing it in New York City.
The Kirkus Prize is one of the richest annual literary awards in the world, with three prizes of $50,000 given to the author/creators of the best fiction, nonfiction, and young readers’ literature of the year. To be eligible for this year’s prize, books must be published between Nov. 1, 2022 and Oct. 31, 2023, and have earned a starred review.
The 2023 Kirkus Prizes will be awarded at Tribeca Rooftop on Wednesday, Oct. 11, in a ceremony emceed by Editor-in-Chief Tom Beer, with remarks by Publisher and CEO Meg LaBorde Kuehn. If you can’t join us in person, please join us on our YouTube channel, where the ceremony will be livestreamed, beginning at 7 p.m. EST.
In this special episode, Tom Beer joins me to discuss all things Kirkus Prize ahead of this year’s 10th anniversary celebration and awards ceremony. Then Kirkus’ editors share some of their favorite Kirkus Prize memories from years gone by. And in a sponsored interview, I talk with Sydney Smith, author/illustrator of Do You Remember? (Neal Porter/Holiday House Oct. 3), a poignant picture book in which a mother and son reminisce while starting over in a new city: “An immensely satisfying glimpse of a family’s ability to navigate challenges through honest conversation and mutual support” (starred review).
THE 2023 KIRKUS PRIZE FINALISTS:
FICTION:
Witness by Jamel Brinkley (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
White Cat, Black Dog by Kelly Link (Random House)
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride (Riverhead)
The Bee Sting by Paul Murray (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward (Scribner)
NONFICTION:
Red Memory: The Afterlives of China’s Cultural Revolutionby Tania Branigan (Norton)
Mr. B: George Balanchine’s 20th Century by Jennifer Homans (Random House)
How Not To Kill Yourself: A Portrait of the Suicidal Mind by Clancy Martin (Pantheon)
How To Say Babylon: A Memoir by Safiya Sinclair (Simon & Schuster)
Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of “Latino” by Héctor Tobar (MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey From Slavery to Freedom by Ilyon Woo (Simon & Schuster)
YOUNG READERS’ LITERATURE:
Picture Books:
Together We Swim by Valerie Bolling, illus. by Kaylani Juanita (Chronicle Books)
João by a Thread, written and illus. by Roger Mello, trans. by Daniel Hahn (Elsewhere Editions)
Middle Grade:
Julia and the Shark by Kiran Millwood Hargrave, illus. by Tom de Freston (Union Square Kids)
The Skull: A Tyrolean Folktale by Jon Klassen (Candlewick)
Young Adult:
America Redux: Visual Stories From Our Dynamic History by Ariel Aberg-Riger (Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins)
The Eternal Return of Clara Hart by Louise Finch (Little Island)
THANKS TO OUR ADVERTISERS:
Red Tiger Hunting by Alexander C. Juden
Clara’s Secret by Stephan R. Frenkel
Circle of Night by Stephen de Villiers Graaff
A Life of Her Own by Wendy Zomparelli
Fully Booked is produced by Cabel Adkins Audio and Megan Labrise.
