Lauren Groff on the 2024 TIME 100

Congratulations to Lauren Groff for her inclusion in the 2024 TIME 100, TIME magazine’s annual list of the world’s most influential people!

Novelist and TIME 100 alumna Ann Patchett shared the following praise for Lauren in her citation for the issue:

“Her novels would have been enough. The Vaster Wilds, Matrix, Fates and Furies—flights of imagination and dives into history that keep readers turning pages late into the night. Her collection Florida (my personal favorite) won the Story Prize. But Lauren Groff is more than a great writer, she’s also a great citizen, channeling her belief that everyone should be free to read the books they choose into The Lynx, her new bookstore in Gainesville, Fla. When I heard the news, I wanted to stop her. I wanted to praise her. I wanted to tell her there will be days that being both a writer and a bookstore owner will feel like one job too many. Just ask Louise Erdrich, Emma Straub, Judy Blume, Jeff Kinney. Ask me. But the joy of putting the right book into a customer’s hands will make up for everything. Once again, Lauren Groff is doing spectacular work.”

View the full entry here and explore the complete 2024 TIME 100 list here.

And discover The Lynx, Gainesville, Florida’s brand-new Groff-owned bookshop, here!

Isabella Hammad wins the 2024 Aspen Words Literary Prize

Congratulations to Isabella Hammad, who has won the 2024 Aspen Words Literary Prize for her novel ENTER GHOST (Grove Press, 2023)! The Aspen Words Prize is annual award for an influential work of fiction that illuminates a vital contemporary issue and demonstrates the transformative power of literature on thought and culture.

The Aspen Words jury shared the following about ENTER GHOST:

“In elegant, nuanced prose, Isabella Hammad tells the story of Sonia Nasir, a stage actress living in London who returns to her homeland of Palestine to visit her sister, Haneen, after many years away and finds herself roped into a production of Hamlet in the West Bank. Exploring themes of diaspora, displacement, and the search for identity, Hammad constructs a world rich in texture and emotion. A poignant narrative of resilience and the quest for belonging, Enter Ghost is a dazzling story of self-discovery against the backdrop of displacement.”

Learn more about the Aspen Words Prize here.

And discover ENTER GHOST here.

Emma Cline a 2024 Guggenheim Fellow

Congratulations to Emma Cline, who has been named a 2024 Guggenheim Fellow in Fiction! The John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship provides support to culture creators working across 52 disciplines to “pursue independent work at the highest level under ‘the freest possible conditions.’”

View the full list of 2024 fellows here.

Mary Jo Bang on the PEN/Voelcker longlist and a Lambda finalist

Congratulations to Mary Jo Bang, who has recently been named a 2024 nominee for both the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry Collection (whose longlist was announced on April 10th) and the Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Poetry for her collection A FILM IN WHICH I PLAY EVERYONE (Graywolf 2023)!

The PEN Award recipients will be announced at the organization’s 2024 Literary Awards Ceremony on April 29th. The Lambda Literary Awards will be given out at the 2024 Lammys ceremony on June 11th.

See the PEN Awards longlists here and the Lamda Literary Award nominations here.

And discover A FILM IN WHICH I PLAY EVERYONE here.


Javier Zamora receives a 2024 Whiting Award

Congratulations to Javier Zamora, who has received a 2024 Whiting Award honoring his non-fiction and poetry! Read the full recipient profile of Javier here, and find the full list of this year’s recipients here. And discover SOLITO (Hogarth 2022) here.

From the Whiting Selection Committee:

This is a powerful writer, a brilliant writer, a necessary writer. Javier Zamora’s two absorbing books – watchful, incantatory poems and an unsparing memoir – tunnel deeply into the experience of crossing the border as a child, and then widen to consider those who leave and those who stay, the rent in the fabric of family and how it might be mended. His work transmutes testimony into art; whatever he turns his eye on next will also enlarge us.



Paul Yoon wins the 2023 Story Prize!

Enormous congratulations to Paul Yoon, winner of the 2023 Story Prize for his collection THE HIVE AND THE HONEY (S&S/Marysue Rucci Books 2023)!

The Story Prize recognizes the best short story collection of the year; the prize’s three-person judging panel lauded THE HIVE AND THE HONEY for “its widely varied settings, skillful prose, profundity, and restrained but poignantly evocative tone.” The full text of the judges’ citation can be read at Lit Hub.

Discover THE HIVE AND THE HONEY here.

Isabella Hammad named an Aspen Words Prize finalist

Congratulations to Isabella Hammad, whose novel Enter Ghost is one of five finalists for the 2024 Aspen Words Literary Prize!

The Aspen Words Literary Prize is an annual award for an influential work of fiction that illuminates a vital contemporary issue and demonstrates the transformative power of literature on thought and culture.

The 2024 winner will be announced on April 25th at an awards ceremony at the Morgan Library.

View the full shortlist here.

And discover Enter Ghost (Grove, 2023) here.