Joyce Carol Oates Prize: 2021 Finalists
We are pleased to announce the 2021 Shortlist Finalists for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, sponsored by New Literary Project. The Prize has been awarded annually since 2017. The Prize Recipient will receive $50,000 and give readings and make appearances in the Bay Area. The Recipient will also complete a week-long residency during the Spring Semester of 2022 at the University of California, Berkeley, English Department and other venues throughout the Bay Area. The finalists will contribute work to Simsponistas: Tales from The Simpson Literary Project, the yearly anthology featuring distinguished authors, Simpson Fellows, Project-related writers, and students from the Simpson Workshops publishing for the first time.
Here are the 2021 Shortlist Finalists and their most recent books:
Danielle Evans
Danielle Evans is the author of the story collections The Office of Historical Corrections and Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self. Her awards and honors include the PEN American Robert W. Bingham Prize, the Hurston-Wright award for fiction, the Paterson Prize for fiction, and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. She is a 2021 finalist for the Story Prize and the Aspen Words Literary Prize. Her work has appeared in magazines and anthologies including The Best American Short Stories and New Stories From The South. She teaches in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.
Listen to an excerpt from the opening story of The Office of Historical Corrections.
Danielle Evans discusses her work with Heidi Pitlor.
Jenny Offill
Jenny Offill debut novel, Last Things (1999), was named a New York Times Notable Book and finalist for the LA Times First Book Award. The New York Times named her second novel, Dept. of Speculation, one of the 10 Best Books of 2014. Weather: A Novel was published in 2020 and was shortlisted for the Women's Prize and the Rathbones Folio Prize in the U.K. Lithub recently declared it "the best reviewed novel of the year". Her critical work has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, The New York Review of Books among other places. She is also coeditor, with Elissa Schappell, of the anthologies Money Changes Everything and The Friend Who Got Away as well as the author of a number of children’s books. Honors include a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University, Guggenheim Fellowship, NYFA Fellowship in Fiction, and resident fellowships at Macdowell Colony, Slovenian PEN Centre, and Yaddo. Offill previously taught in the MFA programs at Brooklyn College, Syracuse University, and Queens University of Charlotte, North Carolina; and recently served as Visiting Writer at Syracuse University at and Vassar College. She lives with her family in upstate New York and teaches at Bard College.
A Word on Words: Mary Laura Philpott discusses Weather with Jenny Offill for PBS.
Darin Strauss
Darin Strauss’s most recent book, The Queen of Tuesday, came out in August 2020 and was a Washington Post best book of the year, among others. He's also the author of the bestselling novels Chang & Eng, The Real McCoy, More Than It Hurts You, the NBCC-winning memoir Half a Life, and a bestselling comic-book series, Olivia Twist. These have been New York Times Notable Books; and Newsweek, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Amazon, Chicago Tribune and NPR Best Books of the Year, among others. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Book Critics Circle Award, an American Library award, and numerous additional prizes, Strauss has been translated into fourteen languages and published in nineteen countries. In addition, Darin has collaborated on screenplays with Gary Oldman and Julie Taymor, and is a Clinical Professor of Fiction at New York University. He is currently a nominee for the Joyce Carol Oates Award.
Darin Strauss featured on “What I’m Reading” with Read it Forward.
Lysley Tenorio
Lysley Tenorio is the author of the novel The Son of Good Fortune, winner of the 2020 New American Voices Award from the Institute For Immigration Research, and the story collection Monstress, which received the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was named a book of the year by the San Francisco Chronicle. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a Whiting Award, and a Stegner Fellowship, as well as residencies from MacDowell, Yaddo, and the Bogliasco Foundation. His stories have appeared in the Atlantic, Zoetrope: All-Story, and Ploughshares, and have been adapted for the stage by The American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco and the Ma-Yi Theater in New York City. He is a professor at Saint Mary’s College of California.
Lysley Tenorio discusses the craft of writing with San Jose State University Writing Center.
Lysley Tenorio discusses The Son of Good Fortune with Daniel Handler and Litquake.
